My Lovely Doppelganger
by clarksmuse
Summary: Dean and Sam meet Chloe Sullivan in Metropolis on a hunt. The only problem is, they believe she's someone else entirely. AUverse for both stories. Disclaimer: I don't own any characters except Rose. My empty pockets tell the tale.
1. Chapter 1

The man standing in front of her kept calling her _Rose_. Last time she checked, Chloe Sullivan's name wasn't the most popular Valentine's Day flower. She was just trying to walk back to her apartment after a long, grueling day at the Daily Planet, but this tall, lean, incredibly good-looking man kept blocking her path. She had to crane her neck completely up just to make eye contact with him. A mistake, she thought, slightly distracted and surprised at the warmth and familiarity in the stranger's deep, intelligent hazel eyes. It was if he knew her or something.

"Excuse me?" Chloe finally asked, the afternoon sun making her squint in an effort to size up this Goliath standing before her, a bemused expression on his face.

"Come on, Rose," he said, his voice a deep, rumbling tenor, as if he was trying hard to keep from laughing. It sent shivers of unexpected pleasure running down her spine. "Has it been that long? Don't you remember me?"

_Remember him?_ Chloe wondered, her eyes wide with shock, the only thing keeping her from losing herself in the dimpled, friendly smile on his face. _How could she ever forget this face? the eyes? the devastating smile?_ "I swear, I don't know who you are," she stated firmly, trying to move around him in an attempt to pass. If she'd seen this man before, she really would have recalled the date, time, and place. As it was, his face would be branded on her mind for good.

The smile faltered. "It's Sam Winchester." His voice was all confusion and hurt. "What kind of game are you playing this time?" His hand grasped her arm gently but suddenly, trying to arrest her departure, but she swiveled around, whipping out her can of mace from her purse.

The look on Sam Winchester's face troubled her – the frown and shock made her hand tremble slightly – but Chloe took a deep breath and maintained her stance. "Look, my name is _not_ Rose. Never has been, never will be. So please, let me ass before I spray you down and call the cops."

Smiling sheepishly, as if he didn't understand but was slightly ashamed, Sam released her and held his hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, I'll bite. What's your name, then?" The dimpled grin returned as he spoke, the air between them changing back to one of fun. Clearly, he thought this was a game, because he crossed his arms and did not move.

"Chloe," she spat angrily, her voice venomous, "Chloe S—Johnson. Now, leave me alone before I start shooting." She had never intended to use it, of course, but generally pointing it at a potential assailant generally worked for her. In journalism, she had learned early on, you had to take steps to protect yourself.

"Okay… Chloe," Sam replied with his wide, cheeky grin on his handsome, lean face. Chloe suddenly felt butterflies in her stomach, a reaction from this man trespassing on her time, she reminded herself. Not because he was looking at her with those keen, observant eyes. Not because she had caught said eyes lingering on her face and body as if he couldn't help himself. Not because his smile was so bright it could light up half of Metropolis, or that the urge to lick those well-defined dimples nearly made her weak-kneed. "…what game you're playing this time, but we're in town and Dean's looking for you."

Chloe shook herself out of her reverie about his dimples. "Huh? Dean?" she said loudly, the mace in her hand faltering slightly. Where had she heard that name before? "I don't know anyone named Dean." The mace can shot back up, her face stony with determination – even as her eyes kept straying to his full, beautiful lips.

Sam seemed to grow uncomfortable suddenly, because he appeared to shrink despite his height. Who could blame the guy? she supposed. After all, she was eyeing him like a piece of meat while threatening to blind him with pepper spray. His look of utter confusion, of keen interest, however, surprised her. Why would he be interested in her?

A quirky smile tugged at his lips, the small action making her heart jump in her chest. "Last time I checked, you and Dean were pretty hot and heavy. You telling me you've found someone else?"

Chloe blinked in surprise. This handsome, completely adorable looking, college boy wannabe assumed she had a boyfriend? Had she jumped into a parallel universe? She didn't have boyfriends: she had obsessions. Well, _one_ obsession, actually… and that hadn't turned out well, at all. "What? No, I – I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't _have_ a boyfriend, I don't know a _Dean_, and I don't know you. Can I make myself any clearer?!"

Even as she spoke the words, she regretted them. This guy, whoever he was, didn't deserve to be spoken to like that… even if he was creeping her out just a little by the sensations he was arousing in her. His shaggy hair, while it looked like a barber had used garden shears to cut it, fell across his face nicely, accentuating his strong cheek bones and dark eyes. Those eyes grew solemn with every word she uttered and emphasized. When her rant was finally finished, Sam nodded and broke eye contact, looking down at his large feet.

Unconsciously, her eyes followed his and she lowered the can of mace.

"Okay," he whispered, his voice filled with a confused defeat. "Guess I have you mixed up with someone else. Sorry to have bothered you." Turning, he strode away and down the street, moving quickly away from her. Leaving her with a uncertain, almost sorrowful look on her face. She looked up and watched him walk away, his shoulders hunched down though his long legs carried him around the corner in long, sure strides.

Chloe blew out a heavy breath, depositing the mace back in her purse. She had put the burden on those strong shoulders, she thought, heading for the nearest coffee shop. She had taken what could have been a golden opportunity to maybe go out with a nice-looking, obviously clean cut guy, and what did she do? "Chloe Sullivan," she muttered inaudibly. "Man Repellant Extraordinaire. Boy, I sure know how to chase them off, hot or not." She needed a latte. A large, foamy one. That and chocolate might drown her sorrows for a night.

She ignored the prickles of awareness on her neck then, telling her someone was watching her walk away.

&&&&&

An hour and a large latte later, Chloe found herself trying to relax by the fire she had started in the living room gas fireplace. A flick of a switch and instant fire: one of the many things she loved about her apartment in downtown Metropolis.

The encounter with that handsome stranger was just too weird for words. Dangerously sexy, but weird. And there was an aspect about him she found interesting, even fascinating. Snatching her laptop, she started researching this Sam Winchester for anything news-worthy… or illegal, for that matter. His smile should definitely be forbidden, she mused, typing his name into Google and hitting the 'Enter' key. The results page pulled up quickly, and her eyes grew wide with surprise at the sheer number of hits from the search engine alone: among other sites, his name was listed on the FBI's database. She clicked on it just as her cell phone chirped.

"Sullivan," she answered automatically, not paying attention to the caller ID since she was much more involved with the Most Wanted List.

"Hey, stranger," a familiar voice on the other end chimed sarcastically. Chloe looked away from her laptop and smiled.

"Lois," she replied, a smile and smirk in her voice, "I'm glad to hear from you, too." She set the computer aside momentarily and kicked her feet onto the coffee table.

"Oh, you're funny," her cousin retorted, almost as if she was angry. In fact, Chloe could hear the blatant sarcasm dripping with each word. "I haven't heard from you in eons, and you just suddenly appeared this afternoon at the Talon, grabbed your large foam latte and took off without saying hello? That was totally rude."

Chloe felt her hair prickle on the back of her neck in fear. She bolted upright in her seat, legs sliding off the coffee table and feet hitting the floor with a loud thud. "Lois, what are you talking about? I know I haven't been available lately, with the deadlines I've had to meet and being super busy. But I've _not_ been in Smallville. Definitely not today." Thoughts of Sam Winchester sprung to mind and she shivered: what if she _did_ have a twin? What if Sam had been actually interested in her? What if there had been something there she completely missed?

The _what ifs_ could have driven her insane, but they stopped when she heard Lois's sharp intake of breath. "Then… where are you?"

"Where else? Metropolis. At home." She was vaguely annoyed at her cousin's response. Her surprise.

"Well, according to Lana, you showed up at the Talon not an hour ago, buying your latte and two black coffees with a cheesy grin on your face that would blind anybody." Lois sounded as surprised as she did.

"Chloe snorted at Lana's name, however. "I can't believe Lana Lang-Luthor condescended to appear at the Talon for anything." Ever since Lana had become Mrs. Lex Luthor, their friendship had turned into nothing more than a strained acquaintance. It was distant, on the verge of extinction. The long conversations they used to have over cups of hot chocolate when they were roommates at Met U were long gone: cold civility was all that remained.

Of course, that tends to happen when you hate your friend's diabolical, demonic husband.

"Hey, don't look at me," Lois had been saying. "I met her on my way to see Martha Kent over some documents she needed to sign when I bumped into her. Lana asked about you, wanted to know how you were doing. She looked really irritated about that, though."

Chloe blinked in surprise. "Irritated?" _Why would Lana be mad at her?_ she thought with a puckered brow.

"After a game of twenty questions, she finally told me about seeing you and how you acted like you didn't know her. She said you totally brushed off her greeting with an icy look."

Trust Lana to make everything all about herself, Chloe thought wearily, a grimace on her face. She stood up and padded to the kitchen to get a glass of wine. "Believe me when I say I didn't snub Lana. In fact, I was…" Her words died away when she realized she had been engaged in that mind-blowing, strangely exciting conversation with a man who would haunt her dreams tonight. Whom she would probably never see again. Who knew her by _Rose_.

Never missing a beat, Lois immediately asked, "You were where? With a guy, I'm betting. Has your celibate streak finally ended?" Chloe could almost imagine the knowing grin on Lois's face and would have liked to smack it off of her, had they been in the same room.

"Kinda. I mean, he was tall, dark, and handsome. And he seemed to know me, which I thought was weird since I'd never seen him before in my life."

Her cousin groaned in frustration. "Oh no. Don't tell me the mace made an appearance again." When Chloe said nothing, Lois sighed heavily. "Girl, when will you realize that tall, dark, and handsome men aren't just going to show up out of the blue like that? Was he _that_ good-looking?"

She thought about Sam's dazzling smile – the dimples, giving him a boyish yet manly look – the hair falling over his intelligent hazel eyes. The lean body she knew must have been built with taut muscle, hidden by his oversized shirt and jacket. And groaned aloud. "God, yes, he was." She took a drink of her wine and headed back to her plush couch and laptop. "But I think he's wanted by the Feds." She glanced once again at her computer screen, took in his picture there, and frowned. He and someone named Dean Winchester – _his brother?_ she wondered – were wanted to a string of illegal activities ranging from identity theft to armed robbery. It looked like Sam had been more of an accessory or accomplice. Little relief, that, she thought.

Lois laughed in derision. "Gee, it's not like you don't have criminals as reliable sources of information for your editorials. Why not be attracted to one, too?"

Sighing, Chloe ignored her cousin's pointed remark. Nevermind she had made a valid point: she _was _attracted to Sam Winchester. And she would probably never lay eyes on him again. Regret settled in her stomach, making it ache slightly. "Whatever, Lois. I have to go. The story I'm working on – LuthorCorp's latest fiasco – is due in the morning and I have a lot of work to do." Which was partially the truth: she actually needed to write the article. Sam's faint smile from his picture on the screen mocked her, called to her.

"Fine, take away my fun," her cousin complained in a teasing voice. "Call me if you find out whether you have an evil twin… and about this guy, too. I definitely want to know more about him."

Chloe smiled. "And definitely call me if you happen to see another me walking around. At least that way, you'll know I'm not snubbing you." After a few more civilities, the cousins ended their conversation and Chloe leaned back into the cushions, sipping on her drink while gazing at Sam's face staring back at her from the laptop screen.

_Nevermind the LuthorCorp editorial_, she decided after a moment, setting her glass on the end table and reaching for her computer. It could practically write itself. Sam Winchester was definitely the better, more appealing topic of the two stories. She browsed through the site, her face set in deep concentration. She was determined to learn more about him, whom she assumed was his brother… and that look-a-like named Rose.


	2. Chapter 2

Sitting at her desk the next morning, Chloe yawned as she blankly stared at the cursor blinking on her computer screen. Two hours until deadline, and the LuthorCorp cover-up editorial remained yet unfinished. It wasn't her fault, either, she reasoned, tapping they keyboard with her fingernails and chewing on her bottom lip thoughtfully. Blame it on Sam Winchester. He had occupied her thoughts and time for most of the night, despite the fact that she had been alone with only her laptop for company. Pouring over the Feds' database had provided very little insight about the man, save for what crimes he had allegedly committed with Dean Winchester, obviously his brother.

After hours of hacking and dodging encryptions and firewalls, Chloe managed to extract more useful stuff, like how both he and his brother were from Lawrence, Kansas, for starters.

She smirked a little, touching her hand to the mouse and moving it around idly. Lawrence really wasn't that far away; she briefly wondered if Sam was just passing through on his way home, though according to the documents she had printed out, his mother was deceased and his father seemed to be missing. She had to admit, this guy's past was fascinating, especially given the large chunks of time he was unaccounted for.

Take the two years' time where he seemed to drop off the face of the map. Sam had enrolled in Stanford, all the way across country, and suddenly left after a couple years. After a suspicious apartment fire, killing one person. A woman. Chloe could only assume it had been his girlfriend or roommate, since his address had been said apartment. Her eyes shifted a little to look over her computer, eyes still unseeing. Frowning a little, she wished she had not been so hostile towards the man: she certainly would have enjoyed picking his brain for information.

She suppressed a soft giggle, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks. Asking him questions would have been the _last _thing on her mind, she mused. What she wanted more than anything else was to see how well could kiss her, to feel the touch of his lips on hers. She knew his shy, unassuming demeanor hid something: a side he rarely let others see.

"Hey, gorgeous," a low, growling voice called from nearby, startling her from her thoughts. Chloe regained her focus and glanced around, noticing no one else was responding to those words. When she saw a man suddenly standing in front of her, she assumed they were meant for her. His eyes, hazel with a splash of green, flashed familiarity and sensuality. A large flirtatious smile graced full lips, freckles smattered across his nose and cheeks. "That blush for me, right?"

Chloe blinked but held the stranger's gaze. He seemed recognizable, though she had never laid eyes on him before. Just another tall, dark, handsome guy showing up out of the blue. She couldn't wait to mention it to Lois.

"I'm sorry?" she asked, standing up quickly to put herself on a more equal footing, though the man stood several inches taller than her. That didn't seem to matter, however; after her chance encounter with Sam Winchester, no one would ever seem tall to her.

The stranger's smile became a smirk. "Yeah, I was told you playing one of your mind games." He suddenly moved around her desk towards her. "Maybe this'll jog your memory." Before Chloe knew what was happening, she found herself wrapped in the man's strong embrace, his mouth descending onto hers quickly.

Shock and surprise kept her immobile for a brief moment as she felt firm yet gentle, experienced kisses on her lips, kisses that spoke of greeting and demand, of missing her and wanting her. His arms around her curvy frame held her still, hands splayed across her back firmly. He knew how to kiss, she thought blindly, moving her hands to his chest. But surprisingly, she had no reaction: he did nothing for her. Didn't move her in any way. Maybe had this happened yesterday at the same time…

She pushed him away abruptly, breaking the kiss, and raised a hand to slap him. The look on his face kept her from following through, and her hand stopped in midair. He looked utterly confused. "What the hell?" he growled softly, stepping back and perusing her entire body, head to toe, carefully. It was like he had thought she was someone else. Had _expected_ someone else…

Chloe ought to have been seriously angry. After all, some random guy had just kissed her in front of God and everyone on this floor of the newsroom. Even now, several of her co-workers cast curious glances in their direction, amused, curious, even confused. The situation was _anything_ but funny, though: not at the way the man was looking at her, shock written across his face.

"You know, _I_ should be the one confused and ticked off, since _you_ kissed _me_," she pointed out, giving him a look when he said nothing.

Her words obviously startled him out of his thoughts. "Not when I was expecting to see my girlfriend… and you're definitely not her." He gave her a sheepish, almost apologetic look, despite the harsh words. He touched the back of his neck, deeply confused.

She winced slightly but didn't dwell on it. "Oh?" she replied with a frown. "I'm just her evil twin or something?" The joke was a bad one, especially since she had a sneaking suspicion this man's girlfriend might very well be the look-a-like everyone else in the world believed was, in fact, her.

"My girl isn't evil," he retorted with a snort. "Maybe _you_ are."

"Yeah, right. Last time I checked, I was an only child. And a good one, at that." She put her hands on her hips and frowned, her brow furrowing with irritation.

He leaned in close to her, a conspiratorial look on his face. "Hate to break it to you, sister, but unless your parents gave away one of their kids at birth, you have a twin. And she's my girlfriend. I thought… Hell, Sam's gonna laugh over this."

Her eyes flew open wide at the mention of that name. "Sam?" she whispered, starting to put things together yet greedy for any information about him. _Was this…? _"Who are you looking for?" she asked carefully, a curious journalistic look on her face.

He smiled grimly. "Rose Sullivan, who else?" His tone was factual yet sarcastic. "You're not her, so that means… who the hell are you?"

"My name's Chloe Sullivan," she replied, her irritation growing by the second. "Who the hell are _you_?"

"Dean Winchester." The man nodded his head in greeting and held out his hand.

Chloe took his hand and shook it, her mind swirling in a riot of thoughts and reactions. Sam's brother. _That's_ why he looked familiar, she thought, staring at him. He was here, looking for Rose Sullivan. Her twin, apparently.

She let go of his hand, letting hers drop quickly. Wondering when someone would drop in looking for her.

&&&&&

The West Bank coffee shop near the Daily Planet was crowded with mid-afternoon patrons begging for caffeniation to get them through the rest of the work day. They stood in a long line, shouting out their orders like a drill sergeant irritated with his infantry. Normally Chloe was part of the mass of the tired, overwhelmed mass, anxiously waiting for her two o'clock large extra foam latte. Instead, she sat across from Sam Winchester in a large booth in the far corner of the café, a large picture window framing one side, multiple bodies of people on the other. Despite the noise, they were unusually quiet. Her eyes tried to focus on the various small framed pictures and paintings above Sam's head in an effort to ignore him. Truthfully, she wanted nothing more than stare at him, get lost in those shy, dark eyes, admire his dimpled smile. Ask him the burning questions she had been obsessing over the night before.

She glanced down at the table, letting her gaze linger on his features for a fraction longer than needed. When his eyes met hers in that moment, however, straying to her face simultaneously, Chloe experienced a prickle of awareness shoot down her spine and nearly shivered visibly with pleasure. Instead, she blushed and acted interested in her fingernails. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she noticed Sam's intense, curious eyes remain on her for another moment, almost as if trying to gauge her mood based on her actions. Those eyes might be called puppy dog eyes, she thought, since they rang with her a note of empathy, like he was just as uncertain as she was, sitting together, their silence bubbling them together from the noisy coffee shop.

Daring to look up into those eyes, she smiled hesitantly. "Where was Dean going?" Her eyes locked on his and wouldn't look away.

Sam's lips turned downward into a confused frown. "He's… looking for Rose? Wants us to wait here?" Chloe couldn't ignore the bemused look that crossed his face for a moment before his mask of careful neutrality settled back into place. Honestly, if it wasn't for his eyes, she would never have guessed what he was thinking.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." A blush crept into her cheeks, the sheepish smile on her lips met with a wide, almost pleased one. She cocked he head, sensing a sudden change in him. He seemed surprised, even intrigued, that she had forgotten.

So when he chucked, his eyes wide with amusement, Chloe looked at him intently. "What's that for? You think I'm losing my mind or something?" she teased gently.

Sam blushed and scratched the back of his neck, an obviously shy gesture. "Most girls hang on my brother's words, not forget them."

"Yeah, well, not everyone has a thing for his younger brother." The words flew out of her mouth unbidden; her eyes grew wide, her face flushed a dark ruby color. She couldn't believe she had just admitted her crush, especially considering she nearly blinded him with pepper spray the first time they met.

Chloe saw Sam's entire face and neck turn red, a blush that probably went down to his toes, though his eyes remained steady and intense on her face. A shocked yet pleased grin formed on his full lips, to the point of literally dazzling her with its cheesiness. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn Sam was flattered and impressed.

"Wow, I can't believe I said that," she muttered, breaking eye contact and looking down quickly, mortified. "If I'm not totally threatening to blind you, I'm boring you with the insanity that is my brain."

Sam's smile faltered slightly. "Hey, who said I was afraid?"

"Of which one?" she asked, looking up, a little perplexed.

He laughed. "Of either. I don't meet girls like you." Shy, earnest eyes collided with hers, holding them.

"Right, I'm one in a million."

Sam shook his head. "Not really. _Two_ in a million, though I'm really glad you're not like Rose."

A large smile threatened on her lips, but she kept it firmly at bay. "Do I want to know why?" she whispered.

He leaned in and gazed at her. "For as much as you look like her, there's one thing you've got that she doesn't. Been thinking about that since our meeting yesterday."

Sam paused, his eyes turning misty with some remembrance. When he didn't continue, Chloe inched closer to him, resting her arms on the table. "Yeah, Sam?" she prodded, suddenly needing to hear his response, especially because it was _his_ voice he wanted to hear.

"Rose actually sprayed Sam with pepper spray the first time we met her," a disjointed voice informed them. Chloe watched Sam's face fall into irritation, his eyes reluctantly sliding from her face to look at Dean, who was standing in front of them. Alone. "Hell, she sprayed me, for that matter." His eyes looked troubled, despite the smirk on his face.

"Where's Rose?" Sam asked, ignoring his brother's slightly smug remark. He glanced briefly at Chloe, an apology in his eyes.

Dean shrugged and sighed. "Don't know, dude. I've checked out all her usual haunts: her apartment, her favorite coffee shop, the Daily Planet –"

"Wait, you said the Daily Planet?" Chloe's sharp, surprised gaze honed in on the eldest Winchester. "There's no Rose Sullivan employed there."

Dean crossed his arms. "How do you know? That's a pretty large newspaper, sister."

"Because after you so nicely commanded me to meet you and Sam here, I checked with personnel." She crossed her arms and watched the triumphant smirk droop a little. "According to them, there's never been a Sullivan working there, save me."

"Great, another snoopy reporter chick," Dean muttered, blowing out a breath. "You and Rose really _are_ twins."

Chloe was about to make a heated retort when Sam interrupted her. "Think Rose's using an alias?" He glanced at her uncertainly.

"Alias?" she echoes, her brows furrowed in confusion.

"Maybe, Sam. With what she knows, she's got tons of them." Pushing his brother to scoot over, Dean flopped into the booth, obviously frustrated with the situation.

Fear tingled along her spine, especially when Sam gave Dean a look designed to silence his older brother. Both pairs of eyes turned to look at her, making her wonder what they knew but refused to divulge in her presence. _Maybe the Feds had been right in their allegations_, she thought suddenly, paling a little. The secretive look the brothers gave each other, the silent communications meant to exclude her, spoke of more of what she wanted to know but was too afraid to ask.

She sat back, eyes wide with unspoken questions. "You two are hiding something," Chloe said flatly. "And I'll bet this 'Rose' knows what it is. But last time I checked, another me wasn't wandering around the Daily Planet. Believe me, I would've known. So, you gonna tell me outright or do I need to scoop the info on my own?" She waited with breath hitched in her throat, despite her look daring them to lie to her.

Dean's low, amused chuckle took her by surprise. "Rose said almost the same thing the second she nosed something was up." He smiled, clearly impressed with Chloe. "Though I think Sammy here should tell you about us." He slid out of the booth quickly.

"Dude," his younger brother protested, eyes pleading as he glanced between Dean and Chloe, "now's not the time. We've got to get Rose and get out of here."

"Later," Dean replied, holding up a hand, the knowing smirk on his face back once again. "You two go back to making eyes at each other. There's one last place I haven't checked yet. Don't be here when I get back." Winking at Chloe, the eldest Winchester took off in a near sprint through the café doors, leaving them alone. Again.

Her amused yet nervous eyes met Sam's once again. "Does he always do that?"

A stuttered laugh escaped Sam's lips. "You have no idea," he muttered, meeting her eyes once again and smiling shyly. "Come on, let's get out of here."

&&&&&

Across the street from the West Bank, she snapped a few pictures of the couple sitting in the large window. Her camera clicked multiple times; she wanted to capture the stillness of the moment. The awkwardness. Especially since it looked like they were about to leave. The blonde looked just like her, down to nearly the last detail. Talk about a mirror image: she hadn't believed it at first, not when Dean had called her last night and told her about it, but seeing was definitely believing. It creeped her out, she thought. The girl even fiddled with her fingernails the same way she did.

Her gaze, through the lens, shifted to Sam, a man she had always admired even though her heart belonged to his brother. The younger Winchester's eyes looked alive, bright. Interested. Something she had only seen when they were on a hunt he was particularly excited about. Whoever this girl was, Sam obviously liked her. She snapped that half-smile, the hint of dimple, revealing a shy innocence she had never witnessed before.

All thought left, however, when she saw Dean Winchester stride out of the coffee shop and head down the street, his strong legs carrying him quickly. He was a man on a mission, and she desperately hoped she was _it_. Crying out his name, she took off after him, camera held in both hands to prevent it from crashing against her body. She couldn't wait to see him, especially since she wanted to play _twenty questions_ about a girl who couldn't possibly exist.

Because the last time she checked, _she _was the only living Sullivan within a five hundred mile radius of Smallville, Kansas.


	3. Chapter 3

_Two months earlier…_

_Everyone knows he looked for one kind of girl – beautiful, easy, disposable; he never expected to find someone he didn't want to let go…_

_And Sam knew the moment the shower of pepper spray hit his brother's eyes, heard the string of loud curses aimed at their "attacker", that Dean had probably met his match. This short, shapely blonde was __anything__ but what she had appeared to be: in all honesty, Sam found her downright frightening. And not much scared Sam Winchester._

_He couldn't help but smirk at the murderous look on Dean's face as he slit his eyes against the intensity of the chemical burn, hands grasping for the petite woman who still held the can of mace in her hand tightly, her face a wall of determined victory. _

"_You're going to pay for that, bitch," Dean growled lowly, stumbling around like a drunk in the dark. _

_Sam let out a loud snort of laughter, finding his brother's movements so entertaining that he missed the girl's words, aimed directly at him: "Think that's funny, do ya?" He heard a quiet hissing noise but didn't have time to duck for cover._

_Before he knew it, Sam doubled over in pain, his own eyes burning as if on fire, the stream of pepper spray slamming into his eyes and nostrils in a heartbeat. He fell to the ground, blinded and painfully aware of the incoherent babbling escaping his throat while he attempted to open his eyes to see two inches in front of him. Hazel eyes watering, all he could see what blurs of color moving frantically._

"_Great," Dean shouted angrily, "that's just… __great__, Sammy. How the hell are we supposed to get back to the hotel when you've just been sprayed by the Psycho Bitch?!"_

"_I resent that," came a distinctly feminine voice from just in front of Sam. "That's __Miss__ Psycho Bitch to you. Coming up behind me, scaring me half to death. Serves you right."_

_Sam tried wiping his eyes but couldn't: at best, he dabbed around his eyes with his coat sleeve, only making his eyeballs scream in pain. "Look, we're sorry we frightened you, but we thought maybe…" __What?__ He asked himself. __We thought you were the chick behind the demonic activity in the area?__ How exactly did one phrase that?_

"_You… what?" the girl retorted hotly, glaring at the two men on the ground, smirking at their pathetic attempts at opening their eyes against the powerful spray coating their faces. "Be pains in my ass? Snoop around my story, my front page spread? Huh, I don't think so."_

_Sam heard the soft crunching of gravel and figured she was leaving them in that alley. "Wait," he called, frantically scrambling to his feet._

"_Hey, you're just gonna leave us here?" Dean demanded, trying to stand as well. "We need to get this crap out of our eyes, thanks to you, before there's permanent damage. I can't kill you if I'm totally blind."_

"_Oh my God, can you be a bigger baby?" Sam heard the girl grumble under her breath before blowing it out. A soft grunt escaped Dean's lips: Sam peered out of red, sore eyes to see the shadowed outline of his brother standing unsteadily next to the short blonde. _

"_Only when I need tending to," Dean replied, an almost seductive smirk in his voice. Sam heard the girl snort with suppressed laughter, but it didn't appear she was going to leave them to lick their wounds alone. The trademark Winchester charm obviously had won out, making him wonder how Dean did it half-blind and swearing like a sailor._

_He heard Dean whisper something in the girl's ear, causing her to giggle under her breath, and Sam groaned loudly. It would be a long trip to the hospital, he mused, struggling to his feet._

_&&&&&_

_Two hours and several sterile eye-washings later, Sam could see once again, even though seeing was probably the last thing he wanted to do. Sitting on a hard bed in the small clinic where they had been taken to clean out their eyes, he focused across the room at Dean and the blonde-headed girl, eye squinting against the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights._

_It appeared as though Dean had been attended to, because his eyes were red-rimmed but wide with attention, focused solely on the girl, who was talking to him about something. Based on Dean's reaction, his short laugh that seemed larger in the small room, Sam had a pretty good idea of what was happening. He watched Dean put a hand on her arm, smoothing her skin in a circular pattern, and looked away, irritated._

"_She squirted us with mace, and now he's flirting with her," he grumbled under his breath, fighting the urge to rub his weary, pained eyes. They had a job to do: a demon to hunt. Dean knew better than to flirt like this during a hunt. Sam knew his brother was breaking his own rules, which usually meant only one thing._

_Dean Winchester was smitten with this girl. He snorted softly. Yeah, because that always turns out well, he thought, remembering Cassie and the last time Dean had let someone in his life._

_A shuffling of footsteps made him look up. Dean stood in front of him, a goofy grin on his face, though his eyes remained slightly closed from the intense light. "Sammy? You okay?" he asked calmly._

"_Sure." A shrug. "You?"_

_Dean cast a glance over his shoulder at the blonde girl, who stood in her original spot, dark blue orbs staring intently at Dean. "Aw, never better," he remarked, turning to glance back at Sam. "I only wish we had more time to hang out with Rose, because __she__ is definitely one of a kind."_

_Shaking his head, Sam stood up and fumbled around for his coat. "Wow, that's so nice to know," he muttered under his breath. "You like the girl who just attacked us. You have wonderful taste in women."_

_The smile on Dean's face fell. "Hey, just stop right there, dammit," he growled. "There's more to this girl than I first thought. She's…" His words died in his voice, his face turning pensive for a moment._

_Shrugging on his jacket, Sam gave Dean a look when he didn't continue. "She's… what? Pretty? Mouthy? Scary?"_

"_Different, okay? Just… different. And she's not just 'pretty'. She's smokin'." He let out a short wolf whistle, catching Rose's attention. He turned back to smile wickedly at her, eyebrows waggling suggestively._

"_Yeah, whatever," Sam said, casting a last look in the girl's direction. He admitted it: the blonde curling hair, her piercing intelligent blue eyes, and her luscious curves intrigued him. She was definitely a head-turner. But he wasn't going there, not since Dean obviously liked her for some insane reason. He smirked, walking away from his brother. Maybe that was their connection, he mused. Insanity. After all, that was Dean Winchester's trademark attitude, right?_

_He approached the blonde, his smile turning civil, hand held out. "Name's Sam," he stated evenly, politely, catching her attention for only a moment._

_She put her hand in his and shook it tightly. "Rose Sullivan," she replied, looking anything but how he thought she should – sheepish, apologetic. "Nice to meet you."_

_Yeah, he thought, grimacing inwardly. I wish I could say the same. He nodded and pulled his hand away, hearing Dean approach them quickly. By then, Rose's attention had already strayed back to the eldest Winchester, and there seemed to be little use in Sam standing around, feeling like an idiot. Not when they still had a hunt to complete._

"_Where's the Impala?" he asked out loud, looking back to see Dean and Rose eyeing each other, smiles on their faces, their hands touching arms gently. He sighed and rolled his eyes. He needed to get away from them. Quickly._

_Watching his brother make out with a girl would put him in therapy for the rest of his life. He fished the keys out of his jacket pocket._

"_Parked out front," Dean called back, not looking away from Rose's mesmerizing eyes. "I'll see you in the morning, okay?"_

_Sam snorted and tried to laugh, but his eyes ached along with his head. "Sure. Tomorrow morning," he muttered, striding through the clinic doors quickly. He didn't want to see anymore, especially not the woman who had ruined their hunt for the night and nearly blinded them. What __he__ needed was a decent night's sleep. He'd let Dean handle Rose Sullivan._

&&&&&

The short trek back to the Daily Planet felt more like a trip around the world in a row boat, despite the fact that Chloe was practically running to keep up with Sam. Her heels clicked rapidly against the pavement as she struggled to keep pace with his long-legged strides. She could tell he was lost in thought, his face set in neutrality, which made the already staggering awkwardness hit the top of the Richter scale. She cleared her throat loudly, trying to get his attention, her breath coming in shallow pants as she nearly tripped on a crack in the pavement. "Hey Speedy Gonzales," she quipped in irritation, "You wanna save the jog for when I'm wearing sneakers?"

Sam stopped just short of the Daily Planet's main entrance and turned to look down at her. "Sorry," he remarked sheepishly, wearing an uncertain smile, obviously still distracted by something. "I tend to walk fast when I've got stuff on my mind."

She threw him a look. "Me too," she stated, her voice breathless, lips curled into a knowing smile, "but you make me feel like I'm running the New York marathon to keep up with you." The pedestrian traffic was thick and flowing where they had halted, nearly crushing Chloe against Sam's chest. She drew in a quick breath, determined to remain steady, despite the grip she now had on his toned arms.

"Call it a curse for being tall," Sam replied with a small shrug, putting a gentle grip on her shoulders and moving back from her. She looked up at him and their eyes met: once again, she was struck by the intelligence she found hidden in those hazel depths. Only this time, she also found utter confusion, even anxiety.

"I wouldn't know about that, Sam. I'm really just average."

"I highly doubt that," he muttered immediately, shyly glancing at her, his tone quiet but firm. A pale blush spread over his cheeks, making his tanned face appear darker. More handsome, if that was possible. His hand absently rubbed the back of his neck, and broke eye contact, looking down uncertainly.

Chloe wondered if he had meant to say those words. Nevertheless, she bit her lip, herself feeling the butterflies rise in her stomach. "But you don't know anything about me," she whispered.

His head shot up suddenly and he regarded her curiously. "I'd like to…do something to fix that. Maybe." He chuckled awkwardly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. His dimpled smile showed itself, making Chloe keenly aware of the fact that he seemed to like her. Prickles of anticipation rushed down her spine. Was he asking her out? she wondered, the hint of a smile threatening to spill onto her lips.

"Got any theories you'd like to test out?" Chloe teased gently, trying to get him to look at her directly, to bring him out a little. He might be hesitant, she thought, but Sam Winchester was definitely an enigma she was interested in figuring out.

Sam appeared to read the hint of encouragement in her voice, because he looked at her finally, eyes connecting for a moment. "Maybe… dinner tonight for a start?" he asked, eyes hopeful yet wary. She hoped she'd understand why he seemed so duplicitous about her.

"How about… Italian? There's a great little place just around the corner from my apartment." She pointed her hand down the street, vaguely referring to the street on which she lived, fighting a bright smile from appearing on her lips.

Sam's shy grin suddenly became a full-blown smile, dazzling her, making her tingle all the way to her toes. She felt warm despite the cool breeze surrounding them. "So, pick you up at eight tonight?" He sounded almost matter-of-fact, though the riotous look in his eyes suggested otherwise.

She nodded and bit her lip, struck by the sudden shyness she felt. Someone was actually asking her out, she thought. A good looking guy, no less. She opened her mouth to speak but found she lacked the words. She swallowed hard, stepping away from him and towards the revolving front door. "So I'll see you tonight? And you can tell me all about potentially evil twin?"

The smile fell a little and a dark glint entered Sam's eyes, making Chloe wonder who this woman was, exactly. "Sure," he called out with a light-hearted tone, "just as long as you don't stand me up. That would really suck." He raised his hand in a short wave and took off down the street, walking briskly in the direction his brother Dean had taken.

Almost as if he didn't want Chloe to change her mind.

The silly smile finally won out and formed itself on Chloe's lips. Her heart pounded in her chest, the nerves in her stomach knotting tightly. Entering the Daily Planet and nearly running down the stairs, she mentally ran through her closet of things, wondering just what to wear. She needed to call Lois, that was a definite. She nearly bumped into a couple co-workers on her way back to her desk, though their strange looks didn't phase her in the least.

Let them stare, she thought, sitting at her computer once again. I have way too much to look forward to.


	4. Chapter 4

The restaurant around them was bustling – noisy, chattering patrons and silent, swiftly moving servers – yet the atmosphere was dim with romantic ambiance. With Sam sitting across from her, handsome in a sport coat and tie, Chloe was oblivious to anything that _wasn't_ him; she even found herself noticing the little things he probably hoped she wouldn't. She bit her lip in amusement when he tugged nervously at his tie, eyes shy when they finally met hers and she smiled as if to say _Hey, me too._

"So… tell me about Rose Sullivan." Her soft-spoken words shattered the awkward silence that separated them, and she was glad she'd chosen her _second_ thought rather than the thoughts foremost in her mind. Tie-fiddling being a sign of sexual frustration was a piece of trivia she was sure Sam wouldn't appreciate just now.

As it was, Sam sputtered with surprised laughter. "Rose?" he managed to say before taking a sip of water. "You want to talk about her… now?"

"Why not?" she asked casually, eyeing their approaching waitress with a small smirk on her face. "Unless you have something else on your mind?" She smiled politely when the young girl greeted them and rattled off the restaurant's nightly specials. Nodding absently, Chloe snuck a glance at Sam and smiled at his slightly flushed face. Clearly, he did haveother things on his mind, but she knew it was easier – not to mention _safer_ – to keep their dialogue as far away from their personal lives as possible. Better to focus on how she had suddenly sprouted an evil twin.

"What do you want to know about Rose?" Sam asked once the waitress had departed. "To be honest, I don't know that much about her."

Chloe crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. She could do this, keep it strictly business and therefore keep herself from focusing too much, on how even though he was looking straight at her, he seemed to be aware of everything else going on in the room. Sam was certainly more than he seemed, and Chloe absently thought that maybe it might be nice, once all this was over, to actually try and figure _him_ out. "Anything. It's not everyday you find out you have a twin walking around, evil or not." She hoped her voice wouldn't betray her and that he'd take her interest in the lightly teasing tone she'd applied. Truth be told, she was pretty freaked out – and that was saying something for someone who had lived in Smallville her whole life.

"Rose isn't _evil_," he said, a knowing smile on his lips. "She's just… different."

"How so?"

The smile lingered briefly. "She called us two days after the mace blinding episode about a story one of the journalists at the Daily Planet was pursuing on vengeful spirits."

"What?" It was a little more than strange that an article like that sounded just like _her_ kind of story, something she would write for her own column.

Sam nodded. "That obviously turned out to be a hoax. _She_ was chasing down information on this spirit, a woman killing men who physically abused their wives. We had been tracking it, and she suddenly wanted to go with us. Catch it on film so she could write the article. See how we operate. Something about… oh, wanting the rest of the world to really _know_ about the things that go bump in the night." Sam shrugged thoughtfully, though a slight frown marred his features. "I wasn't so sure it was the best idea. I mean, she'd lied to us and seemed more interested in _us_ than any spirit. But," He sighed, picking up his glass. "Dean took one look at her and decided to take her with us. For two months, we dragged her around on jobs. And yeah, still, I don't know that much about her."

Chloe was fascinated, partly by the story but mostly by Sam and the way he seemed to be able to _say_ things without even revealing them. From what he said, Rose seemed almost exactly like Chloe herself, though she usually preferred the non-violent, more covert method of obtaining information. And she told him this. Sam smiled in response, and a million questions entered her mind: who the Winchester brothers were, why they were 'hunting' spirits… why Sam sounded like he had literally been across the country multiple times. She frowned and cocked her head slightly, lost in her thoughts.

"You look like Rose," Sam said after a moment, watching the thoughts work their way across her green, iridescent eyes. His eyes hovered on her face, observing her every move and facial expression, almost studying her.

His comment startled her. "Huh?"

"Just now. The look on your face, the way you tilted your head." He paused for a second, thoughtful. "I swear, if your eyes weren't so green, I'd wonder if you weren't really Rose, just playing some game with us. I wouldn't put it past her… " When he smiled this time, it was hesitant, almost anxious.

Chloe frowned. "Look, don't worry, I'm one-hundred percent Chloe Sullivan. And you know, I have to say it's a little disconcerting, knowing there's a less-subtle version of me roaming around the city. Especially since this is the first I've heard of a look-a-like living my life." She couldn't help but wonder if it was possible for her to really have a sister and if so, why would her father keep that knowledge a secret? Was it a _separated at birth_ scenario? Or was she simply dealing with yet another consequence of the two meteor showers that had hit Smallville, Kansas within a fifteen-year time frame? Her eyes lost their focus as she stared at Sam, and she missed the conflicting emotions flitting across his face.

"I'm… sorry," he replied honestly, glancing down at his drink. "I bet it's weird, getting all this second-hand from a stranger. But I meant it as a compliment." His voice softened when he spoke, and when he looked back up at her, he took a breath, almost as if he was going to speak again.

He never got the chance, though. His eyes straying beyond her shoulder, _aware_, and Sam's expression grew dark with sudden irritation and exasperation. "Great," he muttered, mostly to himself, but loud enough that Chloe turned around to follow his gaze.

Dean Winchester was walking towards them, hand-in-hand with… _her_. She blinked back her shock, a numbness creeping into her limbs as she stared at Sam's brother and a mirror-image of herself. "Is that--?" she whispered, staring at a woman who looked and walked just like she did, with hair hung neatly around her face, just like Chloe's did.

She even had the same fashion sense: a nice top and skirt combo, very similar to Chloe's choice of the evening. It was an interesting contrast to Dean's ripped jeans, boots, t-shirt and jacket. The same look of shock was written on Rose's face, too, though the other's held some amusement behind it. Her hand held Dean's firmly in an obviously intimate, familiar gesture.

Chloe swallowed hard and glanced at Sam, whose face had steeled into an unhappy neutrality. His eyes alone betrayed his obvious desire to pummel his older brother, though Chloe was at a loss as to why.

"Someone going to invite us to sit?" Dean demanded with a smirk once he and Rose reached the table, his eyes glittering with mischief.

Sam stood up, rolling his eyes before he glared at Dean. "Dude, I though we had agreed to _wait_ until tomorrow for… this." His voice, low and growling, felt almost like a warning, and Chloe's curious eyes watched Sam acknowledge the other woman – _Rose_ – with a slight nod. Chloe didn't miss that he didn't even _look_ at her, his eyes fixed on his brother.

"Whoa, slow down, Geek Boy," Dean replied, a hint of mock surrender in his voice. "Rose wanted to meet Chloe _tonight_. Don't blame me! _She's_ the impatient one!"

The other blonde held up her hands innocently, though her quirky smile hinted at her game. Her crystalline blue eyes sparkling when she spoke. "Dean's right, Sam. I couldn't wait. I just _had_ to see my look-a-like up close and personal." She turned to Chloe and held out her hand. "Rose Sullivan," she said, eyes roaming over Chloe's face, a sincere mimic of Chloe's amazement written on her own features.

_God, was this really happening?_ Chloe shook Rose's hand quickly, trying not to gape too much with her shock. It was one thing to hear about something like this, but this was like staring into a mirror. Literally. Rose Sullivan reflected almost every facet of her: the long, straight blonde hair, the bridge of her nose, her full lower lip. Everything except her eyes, just like Sam had said. "Huh, so _that's_ what I'd look like with blue eyes," she mused aloud, shooting Rose a smile as she scooted over to let the other woman in next to her. Freakish twin or not, she felt a sudden kinship to this woman living a life that looked exactly like her own.

Rose slid in beside Chloe, her surprise evident when she looked up at Dean. "Whoa, I was _just_ thinking that," she whispered. "Except, you know, from my point of view."

"Great," Chloe replied, the surrealism of it all settling in her stomach. "Here goes my creep factor. It just jumped –"

"—to ten?" Rose jumped in, finishing the thought. The two women turned and stared at each other, speechless. Were they alike in _every_ way? Chloe could only wonder, losing herself momentarily in the crazy multi-dimensionality of it all. If they were roughly in the same business, they used the same catch phrases, then did they have the same thoughts, the same dreams, the same life?

Sam turned suddenly and grabbed his brother by his jacket lapel. "We need to talk. Now." He gave Dean a pointed, angry look that would garner no argument. He was beyond irritated to see Dean and Rose show up out of the blue like this, and frustration ate at the edges of his composure.

"Whoa there, tiger," Dean chuckled, sliding out of the booth and giving the girls a look before following his brother to the other side of the restaurant, out of earshot. Once there, he whispered, "Dude, there's two of them! Please tell me you're making headway with this other chick."

Sam rolled his eyes. "God, Dean, can you think with your upstairs brain for a second?" He crossed his arms. "Chloe doesn't have any idea what's going on here."

"What do you mean?"

"I was just giving her the details about your girlfriend, Dean." Turning, he glanced at the women, who seemed to be talking to each other. "She had no idea Rose existed."

Dean followed his brother's gaze and sighed. "Yeah, and since Rose had ants in her pants over meeting Chloe, I'm guessing she didn't know about her existence, either." He glanced at Sam. "So, what's the deal? Think we've got a shapeshifter on our hands?"

The idea seemed irksome; Sam grimaced and glared at Dean. "Dude, when was the last time a shapeshifter did _anything_ but maim, steal, and kill?" He shook his head, incredulous, and turned to glance at Chloe again. She seemed totally absorbed in whatever Rose was telling her, which was a shame. Sam had wanted to share what little he knew of the girl with her. She had seemed so interested in what he had to say; it'd been a long time since he'd been the center of someone's attention.

"Now's not the time for sarcasm," Dean was saying, snapping Sam out of his thoughts. "Look, I don't know what you're thinking, but does it really matter? I've got Rose, she wants to go do this job with us… what's your issue?"

_Where did he start with that question?_ he wondered silently, looking down at his shoes. "Dean, tell me again why you wanted us to drag Rose on this job? It's not like we haven't handled restless spirits before."

He hesitated for a second. "But this spirit is special. See," he held out his hand in demonstration, "these things are totally invisible unless you're trying to take its picture. The camera flash makes it visible to the naked eye. That's when, ya know, we can shoot it."

Sam snorted. "With rock salt, right?"

Dean shot him a look but said nothing.

"Dean, if this spook can be made visible with a camera flash, don't you think any number of the paranormal teams who have swept the place would've made it visible by now?" He sighed heavily and rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension out of him.

"No, see, Rose has this… _special…_ camera flash," Dean continued, struggling to keep up with his story. "It has… you know… um… okay, point made, Sam. I just want Rose with us. Got a problem with that?"

Sam looked at him dubiously. "I'm gonna take Chloe home," he replied, ignoring his brother's question. "And I wanna find out why these two don't know each other, even though they look so much alike."

Dean shrugged. "Mom and Dad gave one of them away at birth? I dunno, Sammy. Does it matter?"

Sam turned on his heel and shifted his way back to Chloe and Rose, his face dark with irritation and determination. It _did_ matter. Chloe Sullivan seemed to be a one in a million type of girl, and there was no way they were related. No, he knew there was much more to this story than any of them knew, and he was going to get the answers tonight. Just as soon as he finished his date with Chloe.

&&&&&

Thirty minutes later, Sam found himself walking Chloe home and still fidgeting with his tie, his desire to remove it nearly overriding his better judgment. They strolled slowly down the empty, dimly lit sidewalk quietly, each lost in their own world. Sam glanced down at her, watching the light play off her pale hair. He could tell she was thinking from the smile that suddenly melted into a frown. He'd thought for a moment that maybe she was thinking about him, but knew that there were other, more important things for her to be worrying over right about now.

He _also_ had bigger issues to contend with and unfortunately, his growing attraction to Chloe needed to take a back burner – at least until they'd figured some things out. He looked away, his eyes focusing on the path in front of them.

Besides, it was all messed up. She looked too much like Rose; she dressed like her and even had her mannerisms and he wasn't not sure he could let that go. He wondered if it would always feel like one of the mind games Rose liked to play on him. Sam shoved his hands into his slacks and took a deep breath.

"So now you've met Rose," he began casually, searching for some topic of conversation to get him out of his own head and back into the world where he and Chloe were actually spending their time together in total silence.

Chloe glanced over at him, her eyes gaining focus in the way that said she, too, was returning to the present. "Yeah," she replied evenly. "It was... interesting."

Sam nodded in agreement. "Especially since you both actually seem to have never seen each other before." His tone was curious, not accusatory and he knew the second the words left his mouth that she'd take it the wrong way.

She rolled her eyes, and Sam sighed, reading the misinterpretation as it registered on her face. "Like I said, Sam, I think I'd know if I had a twin. Dad or... Lois, or _someone_ would have told me. It would have popped up in my research..." Her voice drifted off and she looked away again, her eyes intent on the path in front of them.

"Research?" Sam asked, and the look on her face made him wish he hadn't. He dropped it. "So, uh, what did you and Rose talk about while I was... talking to my brother?" He smirked uncomfortably, tugging nervously at his tie again.

"Lots of things," she replied, her lips curling into a knowing smile. "We talked about Smallville. We both grew up there, ya know."

Sam nodded silently.

"Which is funny when you consider that we've never met and Smallville's a _very_ small town. You know, one of those freaky small towns where everybody knows everybody else?" She shook her head and looked up at him, her green eyes confused. "It's a practical impossibility for the both of us to have lived in Smallville and to have never met – or for Rose to not know the Kents, or Clark, or Lana… she doesn't know anyone that I know. It doesn't make any sense, Sam."

Sam had no idea who she was talking about, though he had a feeling these were obviously people that someone from Smallville should know. "It's certainly worth investigating." They slowed their steps, having reached her apartment building; when he turned to face her he could feel his palms go clammy with awkward nervousness.

Chloe nodded, her smile widening, and Sam _knew_ that look – the look of a new hunt, a new job, something new to investigate. He could tell from that look that she was definitely who she said she was: a reporter. "She _also_ mentioned how she met you and Dean, how you guys... hunt things. Demons, monsters… and vampires?" She cocked her head, regarding him with piercing, curious eyes. "Is it true? 'Cause if it is you guys have definitely hit the jackpot of weird in my book."

Sam inwardly winced at her tone, the evenness of it threaded with an angry disbelief. Even now Rose Sullivan seemed to be worming her way into ruining his life, feeding Chloe pieces of information that she'd promised to keep secret. "Yes," he spoke finally, hoping to put off this topic for another day. "But that's a long story, Chloe, and right now we need to figure out how you and Rose are so much alike but aren't --"

"_I_ can do that," she interrupted, her fingers wrapping tightly around his arm. Sam's breath caught in his throat but he kept his eyes on hers, letting her continue "Research is _my_ thing." She was serious, so serious that her voice sent chills down his spine and Sam had to remind himself that this was his business, too.

"Actually, it's my thing, too," he muttered, finally looking away. "I can't tell you everything you need to know right now, okay? It really is a long, involved story and it was supposed to be--."

"A secret, right?" she snapped, sounding hurt. "Like I can't keep secrets?"

His troubled hazel gaze honed in on her face again. "I don't know, Chloe. We just met, remember?" His reply was agitated and cool. "Rose said she wouldn't tell anyone, but she told _you_. Besides, you've apparently got secrets of your own, but do you see me asking about them?"

Her grip on his arm tightened and Sam winced. "No, but you've thought about it," she returned quickly.

He sighed and smiled gently at her; "I'll admit, I'm curious about you," he said quietly, "but right now, you and I have a job to do. Everything else has to wait." He tried to sound hopeful; Chloe was intelligent, a far sight less annoying than Dean, and working a case with someone more on his level was a bit of a thrill. Not that he'd ever tell his brother that.

She shook her head and Sam could tell this was going to be a hard battle to win with her. "This is something I need to solve. Just me." She let go of him and stepped back, her face crumpled in disappointment. "You and Dean got what you came for. Maybe it's time you moved on to your next job."

Sam could tell that she seemed more disappointed in herself than with him, and that certainly set her apart from Rose, and regardless of what Chloe wanted, Sam knew he wouldn't be able to just walk away and forget about all of this. Not until the job was done and they'd figured out what was going on. The glint of determination remained in her eyes, despite the tears threatening there, and he wasn't sure she would let him help her.

"Fair enough," he replied after a long moment, "but I'll be around if..." He sighed, unable to finish.

She gazed at him a moment longer, then turned, practically running up the stairs. "Thanks for taking me out," she called, her voice trying too hard to sound steady. She didn't look back, though, leaving him to watch her retreating figure with nothing more to say.

Sam spun on his heel and started his way back across the few blocks to the Italian restaurant. It irked him to know that Dean and Rose were no doubt enjoying the meal he and Chloe should have shared. His fists clenched into tight balls, his cheek muscles tensing for a moment when he thought about how this evening _could_ have turned out. Certainly, the _last_ person he wanted to see now was his brother's loose-tongued girlfriend, so he changed his direction, turning suddenly down the empty street that led to the hotel, more keen on the idea of burying himself in research and pretending this wasn't more than just a normal case.

He was going to help Chloe, whether she wanted it or not.


	5. Chapter 5

He stared at the computer screen, incredulous. Surely the answer he had been searching for the last few hours couldn't be what appeared before him. Sam rubbed his face, tired and frustrated. Coming to Metropolis had been a bad idea to begin with; it seemed that with every passing hour, this town just got more and more strange. Through bleary eyes, he closed one screen and read through another website article that more or less confirmed his suspicions. He frowned, so lost in thought that he didn't hear the door slam shut.

"Sam, the thousand-yard stare never did anything for you." Dean tossed the Impala's keys on the small bureau and shrugged out of his jacket.

It took a full minute for Sam to shake himself out of his thoughts. "Huh?" he said absently, glancing at his brother before retreating behind his screen once more.

Smirking, Dean pointed at Sam. "Yeah, hiding behind your computer totally gives you away. So spill it. What's with you and this Chloe chick?"

He rolled his eyes but kept them glued to the screen. "Nothing. I don't want to talk about her. Besides, it seems we have –"

"You kissed her, right?"

"Dean, shut up." Sam's irritation echoed in his voice. "Don't you think we have better things to worry about right now?"

Dean threw his head back and laughed. "She shot you down, huh? Figured it was either that or you couldn't think of anything to say."

Oh, we had plenty to talk about, Sam grimaced. "Do I ask you about everything you and Rose whisper in each others' ears?"

"But this is different, Sammy." Dean threw himself onto his bed and threaded his fingers behind his head. He seemed to be enjoying his younger brother's anxiety, which only infuriated Sam more.

"How is my date with Chloe different?" Sam demanded, laying the computer on the bed beside him.

"One, you're clearly into her and too afraid to make a move," Dean rattled off casually, eyes glued on the ceiling. "Two, she's clearly into you, which means you're stupid for not making a move because, three – hell, Sam, she's _hot_!".

Sam rolled his eyes. "Nice perception, except you got something wrong."

"What's that?"

"She's not into me." His hands slid the computer to the end of the bed. "Besides, I don't even know if she belongs in this world or not."

That appeared to get Dean's attention, because he sat up and slid off the bed. "God, what is this? Not another '_my girlfriend's from another dimension_' stunt."

"Hey, that was 8th grade, and I couldn't believe that girl actually liked me." Sam paused and looked down mournfully. "No, this is the truth. There's a reason Rose and Chloe look alike and have practically the same lives but have never met each other."

Dean grabbed the laptop and put it on the table; he sat down and read across the top of the screen. "Doppelganger." He snorted and looked intently over at Sam. "No way. A doppelganger? These things are heralds of death; evil things. You're saying either Rose or Chloe is --?"

"No, but it's the only working explanation I have. Chloe's clearly not a shape-shifter." And while he was relieved that they weren't dealing with one of those, the contemplation that Chloe might be actually evil troubled him. If either girl rubbed him the wrong way, it was Rose - the perpetual thorn in his side.

Dean crossed his arms and grinned knowingly, trying to mask the emotion that lingered in his eyes. "How do you know?"

"Because I like her, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?" Sam pushed a frustrated hand through his hair and glared at his brother. "Besides, the two shape-shifters we've run into weren't… personable."

"Because monsters are _supposed_ to flirt with you, right?"

His brother's distinct flippancy irked him. "Shut up, Dean, and hear me out." Sam marched to the computer and scrolled down the page, eyes scanning quickly.

"Traditional lore says that they're omens of death and harbingers of evil. If you see your doppelganger, that's usually a bad thing. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln saw a very pale image of himself in a mirror the night he was elected president in 1860, and his wife thought it was a portent foretelling his second re-election and death." He read multiple examples, but Sam felt his brother's body tense suddenly so he looked over at him.

"Does this mean Rose is going to die?" Dean asked seriously.

"I have no idea," he replied honestly, straightening, "because Chloe's quite real."

Dean snorted, the amusement twinkling briefly in his eyes. "And how did boy-genius figure that out...?" He smirked. Sam glared at him.

"Because you and I can both _see_ her."

"So if she's real, then does that make her evil?"

"Chloe's not evil," Sam repeated immediately. A little too quickly, maybe, the words making his brother's spine stiffen. _That was the wrong button to push._

"So that means you think _Rose_ is?" Dean's voice was muted in a forced calm, and Sam sighed inwardly.

"No, Rose is… different." Sam smiled at the memory of telling the Chloe the exact same thing. It was true, he realized; neither of them was evil. He might not think too highly of Rose, but Dean _did_. That automatically made her worth their time and trouble.

"How can you be so sure Chloe isn't evil?" Dean chimed in after a moment. "It's not like you've known the chick for a long time."

Sam rolled his eyes and looked towards the door. "This coming from the dude who hooked up with the girl who nearly blinded us with pepper spray."

"Hey, get over it already," Dean retorted. Sam could see the flash of anger spark in his eyes. "You know she sprayed us because she thought we were hired to kill her."

"And if you believe that, I have some swampland in Arizona you might like to buy." Sam couldn't hide the sardonic tone in his voice as he stood and walked to the window. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed out into the parking lot.

"What's your beef with Rose, anyway?" Dean crossed his arms and pushed the chair back against the wall, his head resting against the wall.

"That's a conversation for later," he muttered, ignoring his brother's angry glare. She was the last person he wanted to talk about. "I'm going to stay here, work on this case. You can pick me up when you come back to Metropolis to drop off Rose."

Dean shook his head vehemently and stood up, the chair legs clapping silently against the carpet. "There's no way I'm leaving you here alone, Sammy," he deadpanned, his eyes serious.

"Why not, Dean?" Sam shot back and turned to gaze at his brother. "That ghost needs to be exorcised and I want to learn more about…"

"… how to make it to third base with this girl?" The eldest Winchester's eyebrows shot up suggestively.

Sam shot Dean a withering look that could have killed, though he knew Dean was right: for the first time since Jess had died, he was honestly attracted to someone. And, possible doppelganger aside, he wanted to get to know her. Not that Sam w would ever admit that to the smart-ass that stood before him. "Sure, think whatever you want. I have a case to solve."

"Then I'm staying here. End of discussion." A look crossed Dean's face that perplexed Sam, but it lasted only a moment. He moved back to his computer and looked at it, a feeling of anxiety settling in the pit of his stomach.

"I could use the help. Chloe… she said she doesn't want my help." Sam stuttered over the words, his face flushed with embarrassment at the confession.

The look that Sam couldn't identify passed over Dean's face again, and he frowned. "Sounds like Rose. Why do you think it took her two days to call us for help?" He watched his brother carefully and paused. "Don't wait around for Chloe, Sam. If she's anything like Rose, you might never hear from her again."

Sam bit back a wince at the comparison and inwardly grumbled at Fate's funny sense of humor. "I'll go by the Daily Planet tomorrow and look for her. She said something about research. I bet working there is a great resource to find anything." He faked a yawn and closed the computer, his mind working furiously to find an answer to this problem while he went through the motions of getting ready for bed.

"It's a good idea, but maybe too public; can't make out with her while she's on the job," Dean called, his voice filled with amusement. Sam's spine stiffened quickly, but he kept walking.

"Dude, let it go," he called back and shut the door behind him. Sam smiled involuntarily, recalling her full, pink lips and how they upturned into a brilliant smile. He had every intention of finding a place less public...once he figured out she wasn't a danger to herself or anyone else.

&&&&&

The next day, Sam arose early so that he could get to The Daily Planet before Dean could start on round two of "Chloe and her hotness". In all the time they'd hunted, neither of them had come across anything like this. Even with shapeshifters, there were unique features that set them apart from their template human. Taking someone else's identity usually meant killing the actual person. Doppelgangers, on the other hand, were more than that, he thought as he walked through the revolving doors of the largest newspaper this side of the Mississippi River. They were literally an aspect of the person, though in a "you're going to die" kind of way.

Sam looked up at the high vaulted ceilings, the colored lights sent rainbows tumbling like a child's game of jacks across the floor, and tried not to smile at the snobbish atmosphere that surrounded him. He approached the front desk secretary and asked where he could find Chloe Sullivan. The woman raised an eyebrow and pointed him towards the second floor, the Editorials section. With a friendly smile and nod, Sam moved towards the elevators, gleaming and golden, and waited for a moment. One door slid open, a smiling elevator operator greeted him, and in that manner, he was gracefully propelled to the floor where Chloe Sullivan was no doubt searching for the answers he had already found.

It didn't take him long to find her, despite the size of the room Sam stepped into. The floor was a hive of activity, with reporters buzzing from desk to desk like bees collecting pollen: talking, shouting, skirting around each other to meet that daily deadline and cash in on their next breaking news story.

His eyes scanned the movement and honed in on blonde hair hiding behind a large computer screen. A faint smile crossed his lips: trust her to ignore the chaos surrounding her while in what he considered a research mode posture. As he walked towards her, dodging and ducking around people, he saw her face set in deep concentration and wondered how she could block out the sheer volume of noise. He then thought about his ability to do that when Dean was in full "Metallica" mode and stifled a chuckle. Together, he and Chloe could make a wicked research team. Assuming she was human, that is.

The sobering thought slithered into the back of his mind. He stopped just in front of her desk and stood there, uncertain what to say or how to get her attention. His hands found their way into his pockets slowly while he watched her. Hoping to get her to look up without saying anything.

"Hi, Sam," Chloe said suddenly without glancing in his direction. "I'm not surprised to see you here." She grabbed a syrofoam cup.

He frowned at her empty tone, her terse comment. He scratched his head thoughtfully. "Found anything interesting?" he asked carefully. He wanted to cut right to the chase anyway.

She paused deliberately and took a long drink from her coffee and nodded absently, her gaze still focused on the screen in front of her. He shifted awkwardly and continued to look at her.

When the moment passed and she remained silent, he leaned over the desk and turned the computer screen around. "So what have you found?"

Slightly irritated by his assertiveness, Chloe glanced at him, caught the determined look on his face, and sighed inwardly. After last night's date fiasco and a long conversation with Lois, she had decided never seeing him again was a very good idea. The only problem was, she was more curious about Rose than she was about beating Sam Winchester off with a figurative stick. She ignored the flash of dimple, stood up, and eyed him warily. "Are you always like this?" she asked in hushed tones.

Sam grinned but continued scanning the article she'd pulled up: an old Navajo legend about skin walkers. Inwardly, he marveled that she was open-minded enough to consider all forms of research. Including old tribal lore.

"Only when it comes to research. Besides, you've got it all wrong." He looked up and admired her immediate scowl. "You're on the right track, but still no banana."

"How did Sherlock Holmes put it? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, now matter how improbable, must be the truth?" Chloe crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow. "In this case, once I threw out the impossible, I came up with a shapeshifter."

Sam grinned brightly, impressed by her mode of thinking, much like his, and her obvious passion for research and seeking knowledge. She must be a real spit-fire at Trivial Pursuit, he thought as he forced himself to the present and her voice resounding in his mind.

"It makes sense, Sam. What else could Rose be? She's just like me! Do you know how creepy it is knowing there's another you walking around?"

"Yes, I do. A shapeshifter once mimicked me before taking Dean's face. It nearly killed us both."

Chloe couldn't help her jaw dropping at his statement, a million questions entering her mind. A small grin flitted across her lips. "Seriously? Whoa... what was _that _like?"

"You don't want to know." He sensed a shift in her attitude but didn't look at her. The last thing he was interested in was explaining how shapeshifters operated with their "kill crush destroy" mentality. It was a sick, perverse world he and Dean lived in: he wondered if someone like Chloe could handle it. "Here's what you're looking for."

Chloe's face fell into a mask of neutrality when she realized Sam wasn't going to let her in. She projected an icy outer armor and settled back into her seat to watch him pull up several websites about doppelgangers. She suppressed a laugh. "A doppelganger?" she asked, shooting him a wary glance. "That's a first, even by the standards of my leafy little hamlet."

"Yeah, I haven't run into one of these in a very long time, but that's the case... in this case." Sam fumbled over his words and felt like sinking into the carpet at his lame remark.

"So tell me, Sam Winchester, what makes you think Rose, or me for that matter, is a doppelganger? I thought these... beings?... were evil." Her face fell and she cursed herself for the anxiety she heard in her voice. She didn't want to be that transparent. Sam must have heard it, too, because he turned to gaze at her intently. She swallowed hard, despite the detachment she saw in his hazel eyes.

"One, you're both still breathing," he replied firmly. "The MO for shapeshifters is to kill their double. Secondly, unless either of you have a secret life Dean and I haven't uncovered yet, you're not murderers."

Chloe held up a hand. "Let me guess. Shapeshifters like to main, kill, steal, and otherwise create chaos?" There was a glint of amusement in her eyes despite her deadpan remark.

Sam grinned and nodded, a little bemused by her general _I can do this all by myself_ attitude. Chloe had the semblance of a one-woman operation. He had a sudden impression she didn't let people into her world and wondered what it would take to open her up.

A slight blush burned her cheeks at the brilliance of his smile. She stared at him openly and crossed her arms. "Sounds like the better half of Smallville. Wonder why I haven't run into one of those," she replied thoughtfully.

Since Sam knew very little about Smallville, he momentarily watched the fleeting emotions cross her face. He knew the second she realized he was watching her, for her back snapped upright in her chair. "Guess you'll have to tell me more about Smallville, because it's infamous name aside, I know very little about it... _yet_."

His emphasis on that last word obviously had an effect on her, because her posture turned rigid and her face beet red. "So," she continued, obviously ignoring his remark by acting nonplussed, "a doppelganger, huh? Aren't they really supposed to be evil?"

"According to the lore, yes."

Chloe tapped her nails on the keyboard for a moment, her forehead creased with worry lines. "Figures. I really _do_ have an evil twin." She let out a breath and glanced up at him uncertainly.

Sam immediately crouched down, meeting her at eye level. His hazel eyes shone warmly on her face, and he shook his head. "That's the thing, Chloe. I don't think Rose is evil."

She cocked an eyebrow but said nothing, her eyes meeting his gaze.

He put his hand gently over hers, though he never looked away from her. "She's different, yeah, but she's not a killer. Rose gets grossed out by watching Dean stake zombies and chop of vamps' heads."

"Ew," Chloe replied flatly, though she wasn't as disgusted by the mental pictures as she thought she'd be. Blame it on the Wall of Weird... or Sam's large hand slightly squeezing hers in comfort or flirtation, she wasn't sure which. She didn't try to move away from him, however; his presence was soothing, comforting. "So if Rose isn't evil, and I know _I'm_ not evil... and I'm pretty sure I belong to this world... then, who's the doppelganger?" Chloe watched with some dismay at the uncertainty and sadness in his face.

Sam wasn't sure which person belonged in this world. He knew so little about Chloe, but he liked what he saw. Getting to know her was as wonderful as a first kiss, a first love, and he wasn't about to let that go. On the other hand, Rose seemed to fit here, too. She obviously moved in this world like she'd been born here. She had moments of kindness, though her snark usually covered it up.

And knowing his brother, Dean wouldn't let her go without a fight. Sam might not be crazy about Rose, but Dean was.

"I don't know the answer to that question, Chloe." He looked down at his knees and let go of her hand. "I figure maybe you could help me with that."

There went Lois's advice, she thought wryly. "How? I'm not supposed to be around her, right? According to this..." she pointed at her computer screen "... meeting your doppelganger usually means you're going to die. So either way, one of us has an expiration date."

"No you don't," he replied immediately and stood up, taking her hand and pulling her up with him. The scent of her skin, of the light fragrance she'd obviously put on this morning, lingered in his nostrils, and he felt a surge of protectiveness at her words. She didn't look too thrilled that she stood so close to him, and if it wasn't for the flush on her face, Sam might have believed she wasn't interested. In him or working the case together. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, and I don't believe Rose would deliberately hurt you."

"But didn't you tell me about the pepper spray incident?"

"But weren't you and she talking to each other last night?" Sam protested and felt instant butterflies in his stomach. "I didn't see any death and mayhem ensue there."

"That's because you were talking with your brother."

"Hey, Dean's no more crazy about this doppelganger idea than _I_ am, but he's still willing to run with it until we have a better theory."

"Since you're eliminated all the impossibilities."

Sam nodded but looked sheepish under her intense stare.

"So we're back to square one in our debate." She sensed there was more Sam wasn't saying, and honestly, she didn't know if she wanted to hear it or not. The intensity of his gaze pierced through her and she became lost in the depth of his eyes. Chloe admitted to herself that she wanted to know what lay behind them. "What are you not saying, Sam?"

He swallowed hard, thought about his last conversation with Dean, and decided to run with it. "Because I like you. Because... I'd like to get to know you better, Chloe. I haven't been attracted to anyone since my last girlfriend, and I really want you to belong in this world."

The words rushed out like a tidal wave, suddenly, swiftly, completely taking her by surprise. After their _datis interruptus_ from the night before, Chloe had just assumed he didn't want to see her again. She had felt so stupid for being attracted to him that she had spent the rest of the evening talking herself out of it. The fact that he was taking a chance and voicing his feelings had to mean he liked her. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, surges of anticipation rushing through her veins like a drug. She wanted to speak but couldn't and bit her lip to keep from smiling too hard.

When Chloe didn't say anything, Sam let go of her arms and took a step back. Suddenly it had occurred to him that maybe she didn't _want_ him around, though he paid close attention to the glow of approval in her emerald eyes. "Unless you don't... want me... around?"

Chloe chewed on her bottom lip and felt her face flush harder with awareness. Not want him around? Sam Winchester made Clark Kent look like a wishy-washy little boy. Physical qualities aside, Sam was intelligent and persistent, to the point where he was willing to open himself up for rejection on multiple levels. She glanced at him and found him staring unabashed at her mouth, at the nervous habit of chewing on her bottom lip when she was thinking. She stopped immediately and smiled. "So why don't we go find Rose and get some answers from her?"

Sam blinked a couple times but felt a blinding smile cross his face. "We?" He watched her grin become wider, her mood lighten considerably.

"You're the Watson to my Holmes."

"Technically, since Holmes was taller than Watson, I think I get to be the leader," Sam snorted a little playfully. He grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket and pulled it open.

Chloe laughed despite herself. "How do you know he's taller?"

Sam glanced at her and gave her a look. "Basil Rathbone in _Hound of the Baskervilles_? Are you kidding me? That dude was huge!"

"Relax, Sam. It's one of my favorite movies. Besides, I'm the reporter: I have to get it from the horse's mouth, which makes me Holmes." Chloe picked up a pen and spiral notebook to emphasize her words, a beautiful glow surrounding her. Sam wondered whether it was from their banter, his admission, or the thrill of the hunt. Because she was more beautiful when she was on the hunt for information. The glint of determination laced with anticipation reminded him of himself when he and Dean found a new hunt.

It was always, for him, the thrill of discovery, to glean as much information as possible. He sensed it was no different for her. "I'm calling Dean so you and Rose can meet up, okay?" he whispered and pulled the phone to her ear. "And maybe afterwards, we could --?"

"-- try Date, version 2.0?" Chloe flushed at her interruption, but she wanted that. Another chance. Something she rarely got with members of the opposite sex. She watched Sam open his mouth to say something, his eyes warm with encouragement, but he spoke into his phone instead. Dean was on the phone, and soon, she'd be face to face with Rose again.


	6. Chapter 6

"_Remind me again why you think this constitutes as a first date?" _

_Dean smirked at the blonde haired woman sitting across from him in the small, crowded, smoky bar and took off his jacket. "What's wrong with it? This place has style." He gave the room a nodding perusal and looked at her._

_Rose pointed to the front door and her blue eyes flashed with aggravated amusement. "There's a twelve point buck hanging by door for a coat rack. Style isn't the word I'd use." She smoothed down her long black dress and tucked a tuft of wayward hair behind her ear. This definitely wasn't the way she'd intended spending an evening alone with Dean Winchester. She fought back a tug of disappointment and coughed a little at the pervasive cigarette smoke in the room._

"_See, the fact you even _know_ that makes you the coolest chick I've ever met," Dean replied, his eyes tracking her small movements. He tossed his leather coat behind him, a sign for her that he didn't intend to get up and leave. "What's your point?"_

"_When was the last time you took a _real_ girl on a _real _date, Dean?" she asked pointedly and cocked an eyebrow._

_He was silent for a moment. "Does my high school prom date count?"_

"_You went to a prom?" Rose snorted and smiled briefly at the bouncy barmaid who brought their beers and food. She watched the leggy blonde make eyes at Dean and rolled her eyes inwardly.  
_

"_No. Only got as far as the parking lot." Dean stared at Rose and purposefully didn't notice the _Come hither_ look on the waitress's face._

_Rose grimaced and sat back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, fingers swirling around the glassrim of beer she'd ordered. "Thanks for that mental picture." She watched his eyes darken with irritation and bit back the urge to smile._

"_What's a real date anyway, with all the fake talk and crap?" he protested and slouched in his seat. "Most women want just want a spin in the Impala."_

_Ugh. Outlook not good. "Please tell me you detail that car regularly," Rose said and shot up straight in her chair._

"That car_?" Dean asked, a little incredulous but nonplussed by his double entrendre. Her fluster was enticing. "Sister, she's more than a car. She's my pride and joy!"_

"_And you were how old when Momma gave birth?"_

_He tossed his hands up in the air and let out a breath. "God, why are you so literal?"_

"_Because I like the scowl on your face when you're arguing." Rose didn't know what surprised her more: her casual yet assertive come-on or Dean's flabbergasted reaction. When he didn't say anything, she realized she must have gained brownie points with him, so she shrugged nonchalantly and grinned. "It's sexy. You should scowl more often."_

_Dean reached across the table and touched her hand, his seductive smirk growing larger by the second. "Then find something else to make me scowl so I can make you scream later."_

"_My, aren't we full of ourselves?" Rose blushed a little at his assumption, but her breath caught in her throat. She fought the urge to thread her fingers through his and almost gave in. Most guys didn't pay this kind of attention to her, and she wondered how sincere Dean was in his machinations. "In the Impala?" she breathed and pulled her hand away abruptly._

"_Maybe." Dean looked confused and moved to his burger._

"_In the back seat?"_

_He waited to speak until he swallowed his food. "Since the front seat's totally off limits... maybe."_

"_Why?" Rose cocked her head to one side and watched him take another bite of his food. When her question sank in, he tossed the burger down impatiently._

"_Oh God, me and Sam sit up there!" He made a disgusted face and speared a French fry with his knife. _

"_So it's the _ew_ factor." At Dean's perplexed frown, she giggled. "You're scowling again."_

_Maybe that was because he couldn't pin her down. Dean was awash with confusion over what she'd say next. Maybe it was a deliberate thing on her part, he didn't know. "Who _wouldn't_? You're putting the wrong damn image in my head," he growled._

"_I bet you've never _had_ sex in that car before." Rose picked up a fry, looked at it, and ate it before grabbing her beer._

_Dean wasn't about to admit that he hadn't, but she could be left in the dark on that account. One thing he and Sam had agreed on a long time ago: no sex in the Impala. "Wrong image, remember? Years of therapy ringing a bell here?"_

"_So what _should_you be thinking?" she challenged and crossed her arms in front of her. Dean immediately zeroed in on her chest and swallowed hard, his mind wandering to places it shouldn't at this point in time._

"_You, me, a bottle of tequila maybe --" It's a date, Dean, remember? He lifted his head and looked into her amused blue eyes._

"_Whiskey."_

"_What?"_

"_I'm a whiskey girl. Straight up, on the rocks. Can't stand the taste of tequila." She shuddered in revulsion and looked down at her plate of food. She picked up the burger and took a small bite._

"_Funny, I pictured you as the margarita girl type."_

_Rose nearly choked on the cold meat and bread. "You've categorized women into booze groups?"_

"_Yeah, I have." Dean shrugged and looked back at a couple slender brunettes hanging by the bar, obviously checking him out, evidenced by the seductive grins on their faces. "Want me to show you what I'm talking about?"_

_Rose rolled her eyes. "Not really, no. Not if it means you leaving with another girl." Date or no date, she wanted to see if Dean would stick around long enough to end it. However it was going to end._

_He waggled his eyebrows at her response. "So you like whiskey, huh? I knew you were my kind of girl."_

"_Never said I'd be your girl." Even if she wanted to be, Rose wasn't sure that was a good idea. Hearts got broken that way._

_Dean gave her a look and finished off his burger quickly. She was a little awed at how much he apparently loved to eat: he had sucked up the meal like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. She briefly wondered if she'd had a brother if he would've eaten like that. Rose mentally winced and shoved the thought back into her mind._

_He saw the pained expression cross her face. "But you're having drinks and dinner with me," he pointed out when he was finished and nearly licked his fingers clean. He chose the napkin instead._

_Rose was impressed by his show. "In a bar."_

_That argument again. He frowned, a little dismayed. "Yeah. So?"_

"_I've eaten cow tongue with more flavor than this burger."_

_Dean deliberately scowled this time. "Okay, not touching that with a ten foot pole." He watched the color on Rose's face rise to a beautiful blush and smirked. It was true: she liked his scowl. It'd certainly be a first for him._

"_Point is, Dean, I bet you were lookin' to score tonight. Isn't that why people go to bars?" It was Rose's turn to look dismayed. She glanced down at her clothing and realized she wasn't dressed for a bar. She hadn't thought to ask where he was going to take her when he's asked her out. A long black, slim fitting dress seemed like a good idea at the time. She wished she could read minds so she could've dressed the part of a floozy. Might have made his night._

"_No, there's also betting, drinking, and hustling pool." All of which he was very good at, he thought. And usually by now, a girl would be buying his act. So why wasn't she?_

"_Don't forget the 'all you can ogle' meat market," Rose pointed out and shot an absurdly pleasant smile at the two scantily clad women still watching Dean like a hawk stalking prey. She had no doubt that if she hadn't been around, he'd have hooked up with both of them by now. Figures, she thought. Should have known this kind of guy was only trouble._

"_Whatever. Not a beautiful girl here except you." Dean crossed his arms on the table and looked at her, hazel eyes roaming over her face and neck like she was a mystery to be solved. He realized that wasn't just a pick-up line: he'd meant it. Clearly, though, she didn't, because the sarcastic smirk on her lips told all._

"_Aww," she crooned, "you're just saying that because I dressed for the occasion." She leaned in to give him a look at the slightly revealing neckline of her dress._

_Dean's eyes dropped to their intended target and practically bulged. "God, do I ever," he muttered incoherently and nearly salivated on his empty plate._

"_What was that?" she asked innocently, a little more than dismayed over Dean's inability to see her as anything other than said piece of market woman. She might as well be standing next to the two brunettes for all the genuine attention he seemed to be giving her._

"_Uh, nothing, Rose," he muttered and glanced down at his fingers. "You're dressed just fine for this place." He secretly admitted he should have taken her someplace nicer, since she obviously deserved better. That thought made him wonder why she wanted to go out with him in the first place._

"_I dressed for the occasion. A real date, remember?" Rose's lips softened to a real smile designed to dazzle._

_He picked up his beer and took a long dreg, though he watched her out of the corner of his eye. "But I thought we were going out because you wanted to pump me for information?" he said after a moment._

"_What else would I want to pump you for?" She blushed suddenly as her heroine's favorite words slipped quietly out of her mouth. And like Buffy, she really couldn't believe she had just said that. She glanced down into her lap for a moment, her shyness setting in._

_Dean smirked and sat back in his seat again, but this time he studied her for a moment. The lovely blush across her cheeks, the tilt of her neck as she looked down, the way loose strands of hair had fallen from that thing holding her hair back. Rose Sullivan was a beautiful woman, and he wondered if she really knew that. "What was that?"_

"_Never mind," she replied and looked at him directly, all traces of embarrassment gone. "We're here, the food's cold, and I'm up for a game of Twenty Questions."_

_Dean laughed and moved his empty food plate aside so he could lean on it. "Sure, Rose. Pump away." To his everlasting amazement, she blushed again, her face so red he was almost positive she felt it all the way to her toes. He made a mental note to keep her number and call her again. She was a challenge he was more than ready to meet head-on._

&&&&&

It was like looking in a mirror. Except the eyes were different. And like Chloe, Rose had obviously come prepared: the small tape recorder sitting in front of her was proof that she was just as interested in Chloe as Chloe was in her. Glancing down at her own digital recorder, Chloe bit back a laugh. "So we're going to interview each other using the same methods?" she asked and looked at Rose.

The other woman laughed and crossed her arms. "I never interview people without my tape recorder. Beats going through all that paper, you know?"

"Maybe you should try a digital recorder like mine. Lots more storage space and the files are harder to lose." After that fiasco with Lionel Luthor in high school over the murder of his parents, Chloe leaned very quickly to back up everything she owned in the digital world. Better to be safe than sorry.

"Sounds like you've had some bad run-ins," Rose commented and hit the 'Record' button. She glanced up at Chloe and smiled evenly. For her, the interview had begun.

"It's a long story saved for another time."

Rose glanced behind her at the Winchester brothers sitting a few booths down in the Metropolis Café, near the Inquisitor. "Looks to me like we've got all the time in the world," she remarked and watched Dean scarf down something large and meaty.

"Not really. They're just making themselves at home because the food's good, apparently."

"Like I said, we have time," Rose chuckled and smiled.

Was it just her, or was this conversation just way too strange... even for her? "Not for the questions I have, Rose," Chloe replied and cocked her head a little.

Rose cocked an eyebrow and looked disappointed. "But I like playing Twenty Questions, Chloe."

She laughed. "I do, too, believe me, but there's just this little thing we have to talk about."

"Yeah, I know."

Rose looked unsettled suddenly and they both fell into an uneasy silence. Chloe bit her lip, a little torn between the reporter screaming to just get the facts and take off and the human who wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day with Rose Sullivan, drinking coffee and swapping stories about their lives.

However, something prevented her from voicing the million questions she wanted to ask. Maybe it was the lonely, almost haunted look in Rose's eyes. Almost as if speaking aloud such things might break her. Chloe was surprised by the vulnerability, especially given how much Sam had portrayed her as a hard-nosed, no nonsense person. After a few moments, Chloe took a breath and hesitantly whispered, "Such as why there's two of us and I've never met you."

Rose nodded but didn't look up. "Yep, that'd be the one."

"So let's start with the most obvious question. Where were you born?"

"Smallville." Rose looked up and stared at her intently. The wary look was gone: the journalist was back, sharp and aware of each question.

Chloe blinked in surprise. "That's impossible. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five." A little surprised, she leaned in and looked at Chloe. "How old are you?" she asked, her words an echo of the same question.

Chloe was stunned and opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out for a moment. She felt the intense surprise spread across her face, though she strove to keep in inside. "We're the same age, Rose."

A smirk formed on the other woman's face. "So? I think it's cool."

"But that would mean we'd have gone to the same school together, since I moved there when I was in eighth grade."

The smile died and Rose looked away. Her jawline hardened tensely. "Not if I was... somewhere else," she muttered.

"Where?" Chloe asked immediately, her journalistic side sensing a secret the other blonde obviously fought to keep hidden.

Rose sighed and sat back against the booth, her eyes focused on her hands. "Look, it doesn't matter, okay? The fact is, Sam called and wanted us to meet. Something about there being a doppelganger on the loose?"

Chloe nodded solemnly and looked down at her hands for a moment. "Because... we think it's you, Rose."

Rose snorfled with surprise. "You and Sam, you mean." She looked back at Dean and Sam and shook her head. "Sam and his walking _encyclopedia of weird_ brain."

Chloe smiled softly. "Kinda goes with my Wall of Weird."

Rose's confused blue eyes turned to Chloe again. "Wall of Weird? What in the world is that?"

"It's my research on the walking meteor freak population." 

She looked more puzzled, if such a thing was possible. "What's a meteor freak?"

Chloe looked at her incredulously. "You know... a metahuman?"

Rose shook her head. "No, actually I don't know. Although I'm starting to feel like I need a Babblefish translation."

Chloe chuckled at the other woman's humor, much like her own but with a distinct bite she seemed to lack. She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. "Okay, tell me about the Smallville you know, and we'll go from there."

"Oh no," Rose protested with a genuine smirk, "I'd much rather head about these... freaks? ... you mentioned. They sound so much more interesting than my life." An emotion crossed her face and made Chloe wonder just what she had been through when she was younger. Chloe noticed Rose's attempt to deflect the conversation from her completely, which concerned her and prompted a thousand questions she wanted to ask.

Chloe kept them to herself for the moment, however; what was more pressing was Rose's complete lack of knowledge about the Smallvillean freaks. "Wait. You said you were born in Smallville, but you don't know about the meteor-infected community?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Smallville's just another podunk town in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, isn't it?" She broke off uncertainly, paling as she spoke.

Chloe sat in stunned silence and simply watched Rose for a moment. They couldn't have been talking about the same town. It wasn't possible. The meteor shower had changed everything and everyone: what Rose mentioned was... impossible. "No, it's not. Smallville's called the Meteor Capital of the World. It's been hit. Twice." She spread out her hands across the table as she spoke, her fingernails skirting across the smooth surface. It reminded her she was still awake.

All the color drained from Rose's face. "No it wasn't, I swear. I was born there. I'd have known if the sky had fallen."

Something clicked in Chloe's mind, like she had finally found the answer to life, the universe, and everything. She suddenly wondered, for a second, if Rose was even from this dimension. Everyone on the planet had heard of Smallville. Hadn't it made international news headlines because of both showers? Hadn't it been under some intense scrutiny from governmental entities like the EPA for soil and water quality from the meteors themselves? The only way Rose couldn't know any of this is if she was literally from another version of the same universe. Which made sense, if you believed in science-fiction.

Chloe looked at her bag and pulled out her laptop. She pulled up her Wall of Weird files and found that fateful _Time_ magazine cover – the one with the broken-hearted pink princess on the cover – and article from the first meteor shower. She turned the screen around so it faced Rose. "In 1989, Smallville was hit by the largest meteor shower in recorded U.S. history." Her voice was grave and matter-of-fact. "The meteors themselves were... unique. They literally changed people on a genetic level. Both those who were exposed through direct contact during the shower and though incidental exposure later. The meteors are everywhere, and they affected the water table, the soil content. Crater Lake exists now because that part of a once dense forest was the epicenter of the strikes."

Rose's eyes darted from Chloe to the screen several times; her face, still pale as a ghost, was unreadable. It was like she had shut down everything but her ability to take in information. "I've never heard of meteors changing people," she whispered as she stared at the picture on the screen. 

"Most don't. These, though, are different. They give off a highly aggressive form of radiation. Getting them into your system, no matter how it happens, mutates cells and gives people... abilities they didn't have before. The radiation also tends to have a negative affect on mental capacity. The meteors tend to drive the meteor-infected insane." Chloe bit back the painful remembrance of her mother, the victim of the first strike, and how she had suffered as a result. She didn't dare mention that she, too, had only in the last few years realized she was part of the metahuman population.

"This... this photo could be a fake. You could be making all this up." Rose's voice stumbled over her words. She pointed at the computer screen, her eyes on Chloe, locked and accusing.

"You can Google Smallville and find out all about the shower, or go to any library in the country and find the original magazine on microfiche. I couldn't have forged something like that on a grand scale," she replied quietly. She sat back and put her hands in her lap and bent her head but observed the woman across from her through her lashes. Rose looked horrible: her blue eyes were wide with shock, surprise, and something new: fear, absolute terror. Tears rimmed her eyelids as she read the rest of the article. Chloe wondered what was going on in her mind but refrained from reaching out. The girl looked like she was about to bolt out of her seat. She now knew Rose wasn't from here: her greatest fear now was _what_ Rose was.

Although Chloe suspected that they were simply two sides to the same coin; that Rose was a version of her that had grown up in a Smallville without any of the people that Chloe knew.

Which only prompted new questions. She could understand Rose not knowing Clark, since he was at the center of the first Smallville meteor shower. But what about Lana Lang and Pete Ross? They were Smallville natives. Did a Lana with parents move away before Rose got the chance to know her? Did Judge Ross move to Topeka much sooner in that alternate timeline?

And what was Rose's life like? Chloe could sense that something awful had happened in her past. She wore her pain like a second set of skin. But could it have been worse than Chloe's own estrangement from her catatonic mother? Or the current distance from her dad? What would it have been like to grow up in a Brady Bunch kind of life, with two parents who loved her, as opposed to the bizarre, genderbent Gilmore Girls life that she had? What would it have been like to _not_ be running for your life at sixteen?

That Rose could be a doppelganger was also a very real possibility. But the idea that she might be from somewhere else altogether actually freaked her out as much as being face to face with your evil twin. A stray thought – that of what constituted a doppelganger – flitted across her mind, but she let it go for the moment.

Fear curled like a snake in Chloe's stomach, and she felt nauseous. In all her trials and investigations into meteor-infected people, she had never come across anything like this before. She didn't know what to make of it. She looked down at her hands and wondered briefly if the Winchester guys would know what was going on. She sure didn't.

Rose, meanwhile, had begun shaking her head violently in denial, her blonde hair falling into her face. "This can't be real," she repeated several times, her voice warbly with tears.

Chloe winced and felt a pang of pity amidst the mind-numbing terror. "Guess it isn't the best time to tell you that another, larger shower hit Smallville again in 2005."

Rose immediately looked at Chloe and glared at her in utter surprise. "That's impossible."

"Why?" She looked into Rose's tear filled eyes and wanted to cry herself.

"Because I was _living_ in Smallville then. I was... graduating from high school... trying... to get my life... together again." She suddenly winced painfully at a stray memory.

"That's not possible," Chloe shook her head. "I was valedictorian of the graduating class that year. They called off graduation so that they could evacuate the town before the meteors struck. I never got to give my speech. Rose, we couldn't have attended Smallville at the same time, otherwise we would have known about each other."

She wanted to tell Rose everything would be okay, but the fact of the matter was that it wasn't. Nothing seemed right. Chloe felt like the universe was mocking her, informing her that her days were numbered. That the blue-eyed blonde, despite her obvious sadness and fear, would be the end of her somehow. Chloe bit back the tears that sprung to her eyes and slid her laptop back towards herself. She had no words, nothing worth saying. Just the knowledge that Rose wasn't supposed to be here.


	7. Chapter 7

"Dude, can you try not eating like a pig for a second?"

Dean stopped chewing a mouthful of food and glowered at Sam. "Not when I'm eating the world's best cheeseburger," he said, his words muffled. "Besides, our women are talking."

Sam sighed and looked at his glass of water. "One, Chloe's _not_ my woman. Two, I'd really like to know what they're talking about."

Dean swallowed and paused. "Girl stuff, Sam. They're probably just talking. What does it matter?"

He looked past his brother and ignored his foul eating habits as he stared at the two blondes seated nearby, their heads bent in conversation. Sam saw their lips moving and a myriad of emotions flicker across Chloe's expressive face. Rose, likewise, seemed to have had some surprises, for her body was tighter than a drum. He glanced at Dean and sighed inwardly. _Because I don't want either of them to be evil_, he grimaced inwardly.

Despite their differences, Sam liked Rose. She was the only other person on the planet who could keep up with Dean, who seemed as persistent in her pursuit of his brother as Dean had been of her. For all her "piss and wind", as Dean often put it, there was some aspect of Rose's personality that rarely, if ever, came out to play. Sam often wondered if she had chosen to share that side of her with his brother. He definitely hadn't seen it.

"So who is it?" Dean's question startled Sam a little.

"Who's... what, Dean?" Sam took a long drink of water.

Dean sighed and gave his brother a look. "The doppelganger, dummy. The evil twin, the harbinger of death, whatever you wanna call her." He waved a hand towards the women.

Sam sucked in a breath. "Honestly? I think Rose is," he replied carefully. That was one thing he hadn't told Dean over the phone. Especially since he knew what his reaction would be: the deep scowl of disapproval on the eldest Winchester's face in front of him. Sam winced inwardly and started, "I know you're not keen on the idea –"

"_Not keen_? Duh, Sam," Dean practically snarled and dropped his mostly eaten burger onto the plate. "Rose is my girl. Not planning on sending her packing anytime soon."

"But Chloe seems to fit better... here," Sam finished lamely. "In this world, I mean."

"How's that, Jessica Fletcher?"

Sam glared at Dean. "I've dug into her past. Into Smallville..."

"And?" he prompted angrily and grabbed his soda, finishing it off in one long drink. Sam figured he wished bourbon was in the Coke.

"And that is one freaky town, dude. Chloe was apparently the editor for _The Torch_, the high school newspaper, and you should read the stuff she wrote and printed! It was like reading a 'How To' manual for the Hunter's Newsletter!"

"We have a newsletter?" A smartass smirk flitted across Dean's lips.

He rolled his eyes. "Shut up and be serious."

"I am!" he protested and held up his glass for more soda. "Where can I sign up?" He plopped his glass on the table and looked at Rose's profile. Sam watched his brother's face fall into deep thought, even fear. "Rose could have used a fake name," he said after a long moment.

"Maybe, but it seems too coincidental," Sam replied and looked at Chloe's animated face deep in conversation. "I mean... Chloe? That's an unusual name." It was a beautiful name, he thought. As if she'd heard her name called, Chloe turned and met Sam's eyes. A wavering smile hovered on her lips a second, and he felt momentarily lit up by it.

The derisive snort that Dean made drove those thoughts away. He noticed the knowing smirk on his brother's face and frowned. "And she's mentioned friends and family who either helped her write the articles or were _in_ them. Does Rose know any of these people?" Sam pulled out a list from his pocket and handed it to him.

Dean perused the list quickly, his eyes dark with anger. "No," he ground out and bit into the last of his food viciously. "I asked her about it. She doesn't have a clue." He leaned into the table and refused to look at anyone as he finished eating.

"So how do _you_ explain it?"

"I can't, Sammy. But Rose isn't evil. No way she's a doppelganger."

"So then what is she?"

Dean's head shot up and he glared at Sam. "She's gorgeous and intelligent. Got a mouth on her that'd scare off an attacking, rabid mountain lion."

Sam smirked. "Yeah, I know that."

"But what you don't know is _her_, Sam. You've never bothered with that. She's been through some serious crap, and if you had half a brain you'd know that. It's in everything she's done!"

Looking down at his hands, Sam had to admit Dean was right: he had been less than friendly where Rose was concerned, and although the blonde hadn't returned the favor, Sam knew he could've made more of an effort. "I know I've probably been wrong about her on a lot of things," he said quietly.

"Yeah."

"But I'm not wrong about this," he persisted.

Dean sighed and wiped his mouth and hands on his napkin. "What do you have against Rose, anyway? The mace thing's a memory."

"Nothing, not really," he stammered and blushed a little. "Okay, I... kinda... likedherforamoment." Sam rushed over his words and looked up to find Dean wearing a mask of genuine surprise.

"What?"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't make me repeat that."

"Smooth one, Casanova," Dean smirked and smiled in Rose's direction. "No wonder she went for the better-looking brother."

"Hey, I wasn't going anywhere near her since you obviously liked her."

"Obvious? Whatever. I'm a smooth operator," Dean protested boldly.

It was Sam's turn to look incredulous. "Buying her memory for her camera? Or that Colt .45 when you realized she knew how to shoot? That's like your version of true love tokens, Dean."

Dean grumbled, "Is not," but he didn't stop blatantly staring at Rose. He grinned brightly at her when she turned to look at him.

Sam shot a smile at the women and punched Dean's arm. "Point is, that was how I managed, okay?"

"And now you have your own version of her to play with."

"Laughing on the inside," Sam whispered under his breath. "Chloe's nothing like Rose."

Dean looked back at his brother, his eyes lit with mischief. "Oh yeah? Been making it with her in public after all?"

Sam sighed, a little irritated that Dean wasn't letting this go. "No. I mean, she's more of the 'go get em' mentality. Had I gone to the Daily Planet thirty minutes later, Chloe would've already been off chasing our current working theory on her own."

"Oh, she sounds better all the time," Dean said with a smile.

"Cut the crap, Dean. I'm serious," Sam growled and slinked back in his seat. He drank the rest of his water and focused his gaze on the urban sprawl outside the large picture window.

They sat in companionable silence for several moments, each lost in his own thought, before they heard a sudden noise from the ladies' table. Sam turned to see Rose rush out the door, a hand covering her mouth, and Chloe slumped over in her seat dejectedly. "Dean," he called his brother's attention to Rose's hasty exit, even as he was on his feet and moving toward Chloe.

He barely paid attention to Dean's swift exit out of the café in hot pursuit of Rose, because the vision of Chloe, pale and frightened out of her wits, presented a major problem in his mind. Sam slid into the booth next to her and put a hand on her arm. "Chloe?" he whispered hesitantly. When she didn't say anything or acknowledge his presence, he grasped her chin gently and turned her face to his. "What's wrong?"

He saw the tearful expression she so desperately was trying to keep at bay. He could almost see the wheels in her mind turning and grimaced. So the talk hadn't gone well, though the way he had seen Rose literally stumble her way out the front door, both women were just as freaked out by their topic of conversation.

"Everything," she whispered and startled Sam with the intense fear in her voice. He frowned and grabbed Chloe by the hand. He stood her up and, grabbing the recorders on the table and the laptop bag, put his arm around her shaking shoulders.

"Let's get out of here," he whispered and quickly maneuvered Chloe out into the crowded busy street. A sense of dread settled in his stomach: he and Dean had some major problems on their hands, because based on the way Rose had bolted, she was, indeed, Chloe's doppelganger. It was only a matter of time before things went south for Chloe.

&&&&&

_Even by Winchester standards, the hotel room was tiny. The only illumination came from the overhead lamp that was suspended between Rose and her opponent. She studied Dean Winchester's face with a practiced eye. As a reporter, she could read people like a second language. But Dean was an experienced poker player, and he had the unique skill of shutting down: not just his face, but his entire body. He revealed nothing, not even the tiniest shift of his eyes would betray his hand to her. Rose, on the other hand, was not so skilled. She couldn't keep her eyes from glittering with excitement, with despair, with frustration. She knew she was easier to read than the front page of The Inquisitor._

_Dean had wanted to teach her the finer points of five card stud poker, however, partly to whittle away the time spent holed up in the cramped hotel room while Sam was off bloodhounding for research on the wayward spirit haunting Route 9 outside Columbia City, Indiana. Deep down, Rose wondered if Dean simply wanted to show her another part of his life, a skill, something she figured not many people knew about him, outside of his immediate family._

_As she looked at the two new cards that Dean had dealt her, she let out a tiny, joyful squeal. Visions of making Dean paint her toenails danced in her head. _

"_See that? I totally win." Rose grinned like a Cheshire cat as she laid down her cards, face up, on the small hotel room table. Full house. She couldn't have gotten luckier if she'd tried. Her deep blue eyes sparkled with victory. Poker had never been her strong suit, and she knew she radiated success against her very attractive, very still opponent. Considering he had been playing like a pro for years, however, only gave her a sense that maybe she had just gotten lucky._

_She looked at Dean, who still held his hand close to his body, his gaze fixed on the cards lying face up. His face was completely neutral.__Rose wondered what was going on behind his dark hazel eyes. The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she kept silent. Rose Sullivan might be a rookie at poker, but based on Dean's silence and utter concentration on her hand, she was convinced she'd won. Dean Winchester had lost, and he'd have to do her bidding for an entire day. The fuchsia-colored nail polish she'd bought on impulse at the last convenience store would go so well with her flip-flops._

"_Not a bad hand," Dean remarked, though he never looked away from it._

_Rose laughed quietly. "It's a great hand, who are you kidding? Didn't you tell me that's one to shoot for?" She pointed at her cards and smirked. A king high full house was nothing to laugh at._

_Dean let his eyes travel up her arm and lingered over her neck before looking at her directly. Rose felt the heat of his intense gaze and blushed. "So how do you know you've won?" he said idly and brought his cards face down on the table. "Haven't shown you my hand yet."_

"_You're taking your time about it, so that probably means you've lost." Despite her confident words, a tendril of unease worked its way up her spine. The stakes of the game were thus: winner takes all. In other words, the loser had to do the winner's bidding for the day. Rose had taken the bet out of boredom, knowing that there was a chance that she could lose, but she'd expected Dean to do the gentlemanly thing and let her win. Based on her hand, however, she wondered if his pride outstripped his gentlemanly nature. And based on the lecherous grin on his face, she wondered what he would make her do if he won. Or if she would mind very much. _

_He flipped a card over. Jack of diamonds. "Or maybe… I'm trying to savor the moment." The seductive smile grew wider. Rose met his eyes and momentarily lost herself there. They had known each other for two weeks, and yet she melted inside every time he looked at her with those intensely sensual eyes. Not that she'd ever tell him, of course._

_Movement distracted her thoughts and she looked down. Two more cards revealed the makings of a royal flush. Suddenly the image of Dean with a bottle of pink nail polish in hand seemed like a distant memory. She swallowed hard. Crap, she thought and her cheeks burned with embarrassment when he turned over the two remaining cards, the king and ace of diamonds. "Hang on," she protested quietly. "Does that mean –"_

"_Yeah, you lose." Dean stood up and, in three quick moves, had Rose off her feet and in a warm embrace. Her arms snaked awkwardly around his waist, an unsure motion, and in doing so, their bodies bumped together. _

_She noted the glint of amusement, of acknowledgment, in his eyes and groaned. "No fair! You said you'd let me win." She stuck out her lower lip in protest, though it was more in flirtation than irritation._

_Dean lowered his face to hers and brushed his lips against the bridge of her nose and cheeks. "So I cheated," he growled and captured her lips in a warm, sensuous kiss that made her toes curl and her body tingle with pleasure. Her hands spanned her back. The heat scorched her even through her clothing. His mouth branded hers in a fiery kiss. _

_Her hands bunched his shirt for a moment before he ended the kiss and stepped back. A knowing grin flashed across his face, though his eyes showed a torrent of emotion, from pleasure to genuine surprise. The same emotions fluttered around Rose's heart, and she looked at him, a little dazed._

_For a first kiss, this one had been a doozy._

"_I think I should cheat at poker more often," he whispered and gave her a lopsided grin. "I kinda' like your idea of a prize."_

_Rose groaned inwardly and rolled her eyes. She playfully slapped his chest. "Maybe you could contain that ego and I'd want to kiss you more."_

"_Why make it so hard on yourself? You know you can't resist me."_

_As Dean reached for her again, Rose thought of how she really couldn't, that she'd wanted to kiss him after that fateful first date of cold burgers in the cheapest bar in town. And in her quest to get to know the man beneath the snark, she had learned quickly that his eyes often betrayed his true emotions, though his face usually wore the same world-weary mask. He didn't let people in, she realized as his lips descended onto hers again. Another scorching kiss sent her blood surging through her veins and made her heart pump wildly in her chest. She couldn't hold back the small groan in her throat._

_When she broke away a moment later, Rose felt shaky on legs that threatened to give out from beneath her. She kept her body close to him and smiled at him shyly. "Should've seen that coming a mile away," she breathed and felt a flush creep across her cheeks._

_Dean grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "What, the kiss or the win?" He moved to kiss her again, but she managed to put her hand over his mouth before he could blindside her again. Literally._

"_Both, actually, but now that you mention it… can't we play two out of three?" she said and smiled crookedly at him. She bit back the urge to tell him she wanted to watch him paint her toenails, if for no other reason than to watch him grumble, and to see Sam's reaction when he caught his macho older brother in the act. She pushed the thought away, though, at the glitter of intention in his eyes._

_Dean kissed the palm of her hand and used his free hand to pull hers away from his face. "No way," he smirked in return. "This is all my win. And you have to do exactly what I want. All day, remember?" He gave her a cheesy grin of his own, which set her heart pounding frantically again._

_Rose's face fell a little into a playful pout, but she wound her arms around Dean's neck in what she considered to be an obvious come-on. "So then, tell me, Mr. Winchester, what would you have me do today?"_

_Giving her a false Thinking Man face, he was silent for a moment. Rose teased the hair on the back of his neck and tugged at it when a minute passed and he still hadn't spoken. "Ow, okay! There's all kinds of things we can do…" He stopped there and grinned again, eyes crinkled with amusement and mischief._

"_But?"_

"_I want to see you covered… with dirt."_

_Rose groaned loudly and tried to pry herself loose from his embrace. "God, you're going to make me change the oil in the Impala?"_

_Dean nodded and kissed her again quickly. "Didn't I tell you how much I love watching a women get down and dirty with my car?"_

"_But Sam's got it!"_

"_Not anymore." _

_The familiar rumble of engine was heard just outside the room, and Rose rolled her eyes. "You're lucky, Winchester, you know that?" She pulled out of his embrace and, with a scowl, started towards the connecting door for her room. Somewhere along the way she had regained the use of her legs. A good thing, considering she was heading for a greasy afternoon of Impala oil changing and who knew what else._

_Dean cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah? Why's that, were you planning on Nairing the hair off my legs or something?"_

_The only reaction he got from her was a smartass smirk and an eye roll before she disappeared into her room to change._


	8. Chapter 8

The city park was peaceful, despite the constant staccato of sound that moved around it. After they left the restaurant, Sam took her here in the hopes that the warm breeze and sun would calm her a little. Truth be told, he had never seen someone that pale before: Chloe looked like she had literally seen a ghost. Unfortunately, if their theory was right, then Rose was like a ghost. His inside sense bucked in protest at the thought. Dean's girlfriend and demonic didn't belong in the same sentence. Pain in the ass? Yes. Hell-bent on destroying this woman's life? No.

He sat down next to her and turned so his body faced hers at an angle. He watched her hands gripping her laptop bag, almost like she willed herself to wake up from the nightmare in which she found herself. The compulsion to reach for her was strong, but something told him to hold off. She looked like a skittish colt, ready to bolt at the first opportunity.

"So I take it the talk didn't go well?" he gently asked after several minutes passed.

"Understatement of the year."

"Are we talking 'freight-train wreck' bad or 'end of the world' bad?"

Chloe gave him a frightened glare.

"Okay, so apocalyptic, then." 

"It's just that – Rose doesn't know _anything_ about Smallville. Not the Smallville I'm from."

"So she's clearly your doppelganger."

"I'm… not so sure about that."

_Neither am I_, he thought to himself, though he merely looked down at her and waited for her to continue.

"What makes a doppelganger a doppelganger?" she asked after a long moment. Uncertainty and interest clouded her beautiful eyes. "I mean, what makes them evil?"

She might as well have asked him to explain the scientific reason to why the sky was blue. Sam sighed heavily and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "From what I understand, the creature itself steals identities. Not just your physical appearance, but also your memories, your way of expressing yourself. Everything. Believe me, I know."

"How do you know?"

"Because something similar – a shapeshifter – had taken Dean several years ago and went on a killing spree that nearly landed him in prison for the rest of his life."

"Oh yeah, I read about that," she replied and looked up at him. "And they're still looking for him, I assume?"

"And me."

"Yeah, I kinda… made a point to research you the day after I nearly blinded you with pepper spray."

Sam smiled brightly, impressed by her curiosity and computer hacking abilities. If they could make it through this alive, he bet they would make one hell of a great research team… among other things, he suddenly hoped. "Not like I haven't been through that before, but thanks for refraining."

She bit back a smile, though seeing the blush spread lightly across her cheeks made Sam pull her a little closer to him. "So you said this thing you and Dean saw was a shapeshifter. What makes that different from a doppelganger?"

"I really don't think there is a difference, Chloe, unless you want to account for some of the legends about doppelgangers out there."

"Like?"

"For example, some legends state doppelgangers are more a figment of the mind and can pose as someone's actual shadow. They are the voice inside your head that gives bad advice. Others state seeing your doppelganger means you'll be haunted for the rest of your life by this ghostly version of yourself – which usually means you'll go crazy."

Chloe visibly shuddered at Sam's words and he pulled her tighter against him. "Okay," she whispered after a moment, "not the case here, because a)Rose is flesh and blood and b) I know I'm not losing my mind."

"Which leaves the other, more popular one: seeing your doppelganger means you're going to die soon."

"Isn't that like Poe's William Wilson _I-met-myself-and-killed-myself_ scenario?"

Impressed, Sam shook his head. "That or _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ kind of thing."

"So, what, I'm supposed to wait a month or a week to find out if I'm doomed to die? The thought that someone who's actually me and might want to kill me is freakish enough."

"Which goes back to the heart of the matter: Rose isn't evil."

"I know she's not, Sam."

"Just out of curiosity, how do you know?"

"It's… something in her eyes, like she's been through some seriously bad stuff in her life. I don't think that someone who looked that _lonely_ would go out of her way to harm someone." She paused and thought briefly of Lex Luthor and his obsessive ministrations. "Well, some people, anyway."

"Rose is canny, but she's no murderer. Dean wouldn't be with her if she was, and I did some background checking on her."

Chloe looked up at Sam, a little surprised. "Did you find anything about her?"

"Nope, she's clean."

"She's always been around, then? She didn't just… appear out of nowhere in the public records?"

"Nothing I found raised any red flags, Chloe."

"She could have forged the stuff, too."

"Hey, where are you going with this?"

"I don't know, but we have some work to do. I need to know…"

"What?" he prodded gently when she didn't continue.

She sucked in an unsteady breath. "That I'm not… losing my mind or anything." She hesitated again and wondered whether to confess to Sam the power she had only recently learned to control.

"Chloe," he whispered and tucked her head against his chest, "I don't think you're going crazy. I'd sure be freaked out if I was in your shoes."

"Then you don't regret meeting me or anything?"

The question caught him off-guard and he grew very still. "Why would you say that?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing, Sam. It's nothing."

"No, I want to know," he insisted and pulled back to look down into her crestfallen face. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Because I… wouldn't life have been better if you never ran into me? Then you guys wouldn't be worse for the wear, and Rose could live in this world. And I'd be blissfully ignorant." _Even if I am mostly alone_, she finished mentally.

He stroked her cheek gently, a small smile on his face. "Hell, no, life wouldn't have been better. You're incredible, don't you know that?"

She bit back a sob and chewed on her lip for a moment. Sam's attention zeroed on her full lower lip, distracted by thoughts of proving to her how much he liked that she nearly blinded him in the middle of a busy Metropolis sidewalk. He brushed his thumb against her mouth, which caused her to stop biting her lip. A deep blush smattered across her cheeks, and Sam couldn't stand it. He leaned down and lightly brushed his lips across hers. When she didn't move away, he kissed her again, this time more firmly yet gently.

And in that moment, Sam felt a war inside Chloe Sullivan. He felt her shudder but move closer to him, her mouth meeting his after recovering from apparent surprise. Her scented shampoo filled his senses, and he pulled her into a full embrace. At first she resisted but quickly melted against him. Her arms curled around his neck and played with the curling tips of his hair. And when he deepened the kiss, she followed him.

After a moment, Sam pulled back and stared at her intently. She was flushed, her breathing heavy like his. He smiled crookedly. "See what I mean? Incredible."

He swore he saw tears in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them back. Curling his hair around a couple fingers, she grinned. "I bet you say that to all the blondes you meet."

"Nah, just to the smart, sexy ones."

"Okay, Casanova, can we go do some research now?"

Had Dean been in his shoes, he probably would have made some crass remark about researching on each other, and while Sam couldn't help but think something to that effect, he wisely kept his mouth shut. Not wasn't the time for come-ons. "On what?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him, once saddened eyes replaced by intrigue. "What's your theory on alternate universes?"

&&&&&

"Alternate universes?" Dean asked a few hours later, clearly confused, as Sam nodded in confirmation and sat on the rickety chair in their hotel room.

"Where's Rose?" Sam ignored his brother's question.

"She's gone to look for Chloe."

"Is she… okay?"

"Sure, if you consider she's scared to death that she's Chloe's evil twin, like something out of the freakin' _Twilight Zone_." Dean ran a frustrated hand through his short hair. "And now you're flinging the words _alternate universe_ at me like it's something I should know…"

"Guess that really means you aren't the nerd I thought you were," Sam replied with a smirk.

"That's you, Geek Boy. I'm the cool cat with the guns and the look."

Sam favored Dean with a withering eyeroll.

"And how did Chloe come up with the half-concocted theory? One too many Star Trek episodes?"

"I don't know, actually," he replied with a frown. "All I know is I spent the last three hours researching the scientific explanation of alternate universes, while Chloe looked through _Daily Planet_ archives for something meteor-rock related."

"Wait, she thinks rocks…?" Dean couldn't finish his question; his face was quickly turning red.

"Dude, chill. I don't know what she's thinking." And that was the truth. Sam had watched Chloe the rest of the afternoon, saw her determination to answer this problem unlike anyone he had ever met. Unfortunately, he had seen something more: fear. She was troubled, all the way to her bones, and he wondered if that drove her to find the solution more than anything else. Chloe hadn't chosen to share, and Sam didn't want to ask. The answer might prove to create more questions than answers.

"So Chloe thinks Rose has somehow hopped on a spaceship from Mars and magically appeared in a time and place that just happened to have a duplicate of her."

"No, dummy. Not _exactly_ like that."

Dean crossed his arms. "Then what, Sam? This is in the 'need to know' category."

"It's more like a parallel universe, really. Think of Time in terms of a really complex road system with forks."

Dean cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.

"You come to a fork in the road and take the right fork. This fork could be the decision to eat cereal for breakfast instead of steak and eggs."

"Wait, so you're telling me that somewhere in the universe, another me is doing something else because I didn't decide to eat that pansy crap _you_ eat for breakfast?"

Sam nodded solemnly. "Or so the theory goes. Every decision we make affects the outcome of our lives, so we could have thousands of ourselves doing other things because of something that did or didn't happen." Which had made him think of Jessica, of his mother. If their mother hadn't died, how different would their lives turned out? Would he have ever gone to Stanford? Would he and Dean have become hunters? Would he have run into a Chloe Sullivan in another universe? Clearly not, since her alternate personality's name was Rose, and she had the hots for his brother.

The look on Dean's face went from anger to incredulity. "Seriously? You're telling me that another me's living the normal life we should've had if…?"

"Yeah, Dean. That's what I'm saying."

"So Rose isn't evil."

"Not unless she's done things in another life that we don't know about."

"And Chloe –"

"—isn't evil, either," he interrupted his brother. "They're the same, but they're different." The question was, how different? Their dissimilar personality traits notwithstanding, how much of Rose was Chloe's option B she never chose? And where did the line start? He wondered if the first meteor strike had anything to do with it: from what he'd read, it altered that small town irrevocably. Was it further back than that?

"Sam," Dean said and interrupted Sam's thoughts. "You do realize how insane this sounds. Alternate universes? Branches of lives? Thousands of us running around the galaxy?"

"Think I understand it all yet?"

"No, dude, but I see that research glint in your eyes. That mean I have to cart you around to the library before we take off for the girls?"

"Jerk."

"Bitch."


	9. Chapter 9

Chloe felt a strange sense of déjà-vu as she and Rose sat together in Chloe's small apartment living room. Sitting on either end of the couch, they regarded each other with a combination of wariness and curiosity. Chloe cleared her throat and, looking down at her hands, wondered how to begin. Where to begin, for that matter. How often was it that you talked about parallel universes with someone who _wasn't_ Clark Kent? "Thanks for coming over, Rose."

"Considering you think I'm evil, I'm surprised you wanted to be in the same room as me, let alone your place."

Rose's obvious anger hurt her, though Chloe could not blame the other woman for her frustration. "I know how you feel –"

"Do you?"

"Yes! I've spent the better part of three hours trying to prove that you're _anything_ but evil."

"And?"

"And I think I might have found something…" She looked up at Rose, into her confused eyes, and paused. Her mouth felt dry and filled with cotton.

"What do you mean?" the other woman asked when she didn't speak immediately.

"Rose, since you said you're from Smallville, what do you remember about the meteor shower?"

Chloe swore she heard the grinding of teeth. "I told you," Rose retorted in a hard voice, "there was never a meteor shower."

"Not even in the spring of 2005?"

Rose looked at her like she had sprouted horns. "What are you trying to say?"

"I'm trying to learn more about you, because… well, I have a theory."

"A theory. What a surprise. Is it anything like the doppelganger theory?" 

"No, this is a little different."

"Good to hear, because it's past time we learned something about each other."

"Then let's interview each other."

"Seriously?" Rose's voice held a hint of surprise and hopefulness, which bolstered Chloe's belief that she would be receptive to what she thought was the answer.

"As a heart attack. So let's start with you telling me about the Smallville you're from." She turned on her digital recorder and placed it on the couch between them. Rose did likewise, and for a moment, they marveled at their similar natures: both inquisitive enough to make this a part of their own personal histories.

Rose cleared her throat. "Like I said before, Smallville's just a small, podunk town in the middle of a million cornfields."

So far, sounds familiar, Chloe thought. "But the Smallville I knew was filled with metahumans – also called meteor freaks – that made life interesting there."

"So I've read."

"Been doing some research on me?" Chloe asked sincerely.

"Oh yeah. Pulled up all your Smallville Torch stories from the school newspaper. Made for some interesting science-fiction reading."

"To _you. _They were all real and – for the most part – based in fact."

Rose's lips twitched with a smirk. "Personally, my favorite was the wannabe prom queen who could possess anyone with a mere touch. She possessed you, didn't she?"

"Yeah. Not one of my stellar moments."

"But still, you won the crown that year, got your fifteen minutes of fame in high school. More than I ever got."

Chloe looked confused at Rose's grumbling complaint. "What do you mean, Rose? Being the poster child for Prom Queens of the 21st Century was a fluke. I never wanted it." Besides, she often thought that the people of Smallville looked up to her because she had made it to the _Daily Planet_, from cub reporter for the school newspaper to hitting in the majors with her own column. Though what she wrote wasn't always published on the front page, it was a start.

"Nevermind," Rose replied and folded her arms. She turned her head and looked out the window absently, her face closed off.

"Seriously, tell me."

"You want to know why I decided to become a journalist, why I picked up photography? Why I learned how to shoot a weapon to defend myself?"

Chloe was a little surprised by the tenor of her voice, the blank hardness. The fact that she could shoot was something of a shock, though she assumed that it had something to do with whatever was clearly eating at her. She felt a sense of dread pervade her body. Rose kept her eyes glued to the sunny window, though her tense body spoke of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"When I was 13, I came home from school and…" Rose sucked in a deep breath and paused. Chloe waited for her continue, uncertain of what to say. "I'd come home early that day, don't remember why. But I walked into the kitchen and… I found my parents. Lying in blood. _Their_ blood."

Chloe blinked back her utter shock. "What?" she whispered.

"They were dead, Chloe. Throats had been cut. The blood… it was everywhere." Rose's voice trembled. "I tried to scream. Tried to move, but couldn't. And then… _it_ appeared from behind the pantry door."

"Wh-who?" she stammered.

Rose shook her head violently. "Not a _who_, Chloe. _What_. Some… _thing_… had just killed them, and it seemed to be waiting… for me. It had a smile on its face, like it was happy to see me, so it could… kill me."

"So… it wasn't a human?"

"It looked human," she said and turned sightless eyes to Chloe, "but since when does a person have black eyes?"

"Black… eyes?" In all her days as a journalist and a metahuman, Chloe had never heard of anything so terrifying and strange.

"The thing lunged at me, and I ran. I was so scared I don't know how I managed to get out of the house. Ran like my life depended on it."

Chloe nodded but said nothing. How often had she been chased by less than savory characters, meteor-infected people turned insane because the meteor rock changed their systems so their evil nature overrode their basic humanity?

Chloe lived with the terror every day. It was a basic facet to life in Smallville. To the point that it barely raised an eyebrow around town when the rumor mill circulated that someone had gotten rock fever and gone off the deep end.

So when she realized her metahuman ability, she knew that she would somehow learn to control it, despite her intense fear of madness or catatonia.

Chloe could see that Rose, however, had never been through anything like this before. Her pale face, her eyes tinged with unshed tears, evoked deep sympathy in Chloe's heart. Thought her mother was in a mental institution and her father was more or less absent, she couldn't even begin to understand what Rose experienced that day… or the aftermath.

"I managed to escape outside and into the shed," Rose had continued. "I knew the thing was on my heels; I could feel its intense gaze on my back. I locked the door behind me and grabbed the first thing I found: my dad's baseball bat. Then I hid behind a stack of boxes and waited."

Chloe's hands turned clammy when she realized where this story was heading. "Rose –"

"The pounding sound was horrible. And unstoppable. I was so scared, I-I thought I was going to pass out. But then it broke down the door and waltzed inside calling my name." She turned empty, terrified eyes to Chloe. "It knew my name, Chloe!" She paused and put her face into her hands for a moment. Chloe put a gentle hand on her arm for reassurance.

"I broke the end of Dad's bat over its head. But I couldn't stop there, because I knew that if it could get up, it would kill me. So I just kept hitting it until it stopped moving."

Chloe's grasp on Rose's arm tightened in an attempt to comfort her. Oh God, what had this poor woman been through? She wondered. What could have done something like that? Forced her to kill in order to survive? To lose her family so brutally? "You know that was self-defense," she whispered.

"Tell that to everyone in Smallville."

"What?"

"After…" Rose looked up and waved a hand in the air "… everything, the people of Smallville – the Kents, the Langs, the Rosses, everyone – was so shocked by what had happened. They assumed I was the murderer."

"What do you mean, they all thought you were the murderer?" There wasn't any way that the cops could have believed that someone like Rose – who was probably as slight of frame as Chloe was at that age – could have taken down her parents so brutally. "Sounds to me like you would've been in the clear."

"Oh, the cops knew I was innocent," she said. "All the evidence pointed to the man who attacked me, from the angle of the slices in my parents' throats to the fact that I was in math class at the time and my teacher and thirty other students were witnesses."

"Then why weren't you – ?"

"Because the man with black eyes was Smallville High's star quarterback, and his father was an upstanding man in town."

Chloe swallowed hard and blinked back a tear that threatened to slip down her cheek. "Are we talking about… Whitney Fordman?" she whispered.

Rose nodded simply. The air in the room became tense with frustration and pent-up anger. Chloe was speechless: the Whitney she knew had been an overconfident jerk at times, but deep down inside, he was honorable. He'd have never done something like this.

"So when he turned up dead in my barn, the cops didn't want to release the details of the case because of the "trauma it would cause the Fordman family," Rose continued. "So no one believed me when I told them about how Whitney wasn't Whitney. No one cared that he had black eyes instead of blue. By my 14th birthday, I'd been placed in a state home for children with mental disorders." Her laugh was hard and bitter. "Mental problems! Who wouldn't have issues after cracking the star quarterback's head open with a bat?"

A shudder ran through Chloe at the mention of a mental ward: Rose had been to the very place she dreaded to go. She pushed thoughts of her catatonic mother away and tried to focus on the present situation. Unfortunately, the latter didn't seem much better. The names Rose had uttered were Chloe's long-time friends – though she knew Lana Lang was anything but a friend anymore. How had such wonderful people assumed Rose Sullivan had anything to do with the death of her parents? What was the thing that looked human? What kind of place had she lived out her adolescence to shape the woman who now sat across from her, teary-eyed and lonely?

Rose's emotions flowed from her like a river, rushed out in waves that crashed into Chloe brutally. She absorbed it and felt what she had believed all along: Rose was lonely and longed for something and someone to fill the empty void in her heart that had lingered since her parents' death. She wanted a friend, a family. People who loved her and accepted her no matter what her perceived deficiencies. All the things Chloe herself longed for most days with all of her heart.

So having someone like Dean Winchester around, a man who was obviously loyal to the people he cared about, was definitely a good thing in Rose's life. He might be the only person, Sam aside, who wanted her around. Chloe determined she, too, wanted to have Rose around, as a friend and a sister, especially since they shared the same fear of being mentally unstable.

By now, Rose was trembling with anger and frustration: Chloe assumed part of it was unresolved issues but also self-loathing for not being able to let go. How well she understood the last part, she thought. Chloe fought for a moment for the words to convey her deep regret for the other woman's loss. "Rose, I know you're not mental. I can't believe everyone in Smallville did that to you, especially the Kents and the Rosses. I've known them forever, seems like. I grew up with those people, and if anything, they were forgiving and kind. They'd never pass judgment on something like that. My Smallville was strange, and people there learned to accept it and move on."

"Why do you keep referring to _your_ Smallville and _my_ Smallville. They're the same."

"No, I don't think they are."

Rose's eyes cleared up and she gave Chloe a look. "Okay, did I just step into the Hot Zone or something?"

"Look, what you've been through? I would've done the same thing. That monster killed your family, destroyed your life! You had the right to defend yourself."

"But Chloe, that was a human I killed," Rose practically shouted.

"Humans can be monsters," Chloe protested. "Believe me, I've seen my share of them."

"Even then they're actually possessed by demons."

"Demons?"

"Someone at the group home told me about them. At first, I thought he was crazy, but he was the only one who believed me. Got me thinking that there are things that go bump in the night and should be hunted down, especially if they're intent on killing. It's why I spent the greater part of my last year of high school learning how to shoot a gun accurately. It's why I learned to research so I could determine the real supernatural from all that false crap you see on TV. These things are real, Chloe. They're out there, and I want the world to know about it."

Chloe sat there, dumbfounded for a moment. "That's incredible, Rose," she whispered.

She nodded. "So when I met Dean, I couldn't believe other people hunted these things, too. Went after these things with such passion. He's as obsessed with these demons as I am, so why not hook up with them and see what they see? Plus," she continued, a slight blush putting color into her cheeks again, "he's incredibly hot and sexy. That definitely caught my attention."

Chloe chuckled and thought about Sam momentarily, her cheeks slightly flushed, too. "I could say the same for Sam," she admitted with a grin.

Rose's lips turned upward into the first smile since she had walked through the door. "Ah hah! I knew you liked him!"

"I do," Chloe confessed quietly. "It's going to be hard to see him leave."

"If it's one thing I've learned, it's that once you get a Winchester's attention, you keep it. Sam'll be back, you can count on that."

Chloe wished she had Rose's confidence, especially since Dean and Sam had arrived in Metropolis looking for Rose specifically. "That remains to be seen," she whispered and thought again about her abilities. The fear that she would scare Sam off frightened her more than she cared to admit.

The smile on the other blonde's face grew a little. "I can tell Sam's pretty taken with you. You haven't seen the way he was checking you out at the diner earlier today. I wouldn't worry about it."

One crisis at a time, Chloe thought. At the moment, she was more worried about the confirmation Rose's story had given her: Rose had, in fact, come from an alternate reality, another version of Smallville without the meteor showers. And how Rose had been pulled into this reality made Chloe doubt her sanity for a moment. "Maybe not. I do know that the Smallvilles we grew up in were way too different. I mean, you've read my Torch articles and know all about the weird happenings in my Smallville."

"There you go with the _yours _and _mine_ bit again. Gonna let me in on that secret?"

Chloe crossed her arms against her chest and looked intently at Rose. "What do you know about alternate universes?"

Rose looked at her uncertainly. "That they don't exist?"

Chloe swallowed hard. "Actually, I think they do. What's more… I think I made this happen."

She could have cringed at the way Rose's eyes narrowed, the suspicious look on her face that, only moments before, had been framed with intense sorrow. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's part of my… ability," Chloe stated as evenly as she could. No going back now, she thought. Might as well see this through, since she suspected Rose didn't reveal much about her past to just anyone. And at least this way, her alternate version of herself might not reject her completely if the curveball of life – developing a metahuman ability – came out all at once.

"Ability? As in… some kind of power?"

She nodded. "I am considered a metahuman, Rose. I was caught in the middle of the first meteor shower and it changed me. I don't remember much about what actually happened, but I remember the overwhelming feeling of fear, of terror, and pain. That intense emotional reaction over-developed in my mind, thanks to the meteor rocks."

"What are you saying, Chloe?"

"My powers are fueled by my longing, my frustration, my fear. I make things real by wishing for them with all my heart." The words she uttered were wooden and empty, as if a robot spoke them. She had never mentioned her innate ability to anyone in her entire life. Not even to Clark Kent. She'd learned to keep a lid on it since the first time she'd consciously experienced it, and Chloe never wanted anyone to know what she was capable of. Given the chance, the wrong person might try to exploit her ability, much as Lex Luthor had once done to her mother.

"Bullshit!" Rose bolted off the couch and as far away from Chloe as she could get. Her reaction cut Chloe to her core. "You're telling me that I'm not real? That what I experienced with my parents never happened?"

"Hardly," Chloe shook her head. "You have a whole history that I couldn't have made up, even subconsciously. My powers aren't that strong. But I think I might have created the dimensional portal that brought you here."

"You believe that," Rose said slowly. "You're not just playing some sick joke."

"That's the only answer I have left," Chloe replied honestly and nodded. "I'd know if you were evil, Rose. My powers give me a degree of empathy. If you were evil, somehow, I'd be able to sense it, pull it out of you. I don't get that vibe. I just wonder… when it happened. How I managed to get you seamlessly out of your time and into mi – " Just then, Chloe was hit with a strong memory, one from shortly after the second meteor strike. The ending of one chapter and the beginning of another, a simultaneous event that Chloe should have known would change her life forever.

"Earth to Chloe? What is wrong?" Rose demanded, worried. She took several steps towards her once more, her hand reaching out for Chloe's shoulder.

"Rose, I think I know how you got here."

&&&&&

_July 2005. Smallville, Kansas:_

Chloe watched Clark and Lana leave, arm in arm, for the Kent farm to get more supplies for the barn raising. She clung to one of the wooden beams on the corner of the new construction and followed their leisurely pace away from the sounds of laughter, neighborly chatter, the harsh screech of drills and thunderous hammers that were synonymous with Smallville's slow yet steady rebuild. _They look happy_, she thought, her hair fluttering against the soft summer breeze as her sad, green eyes watched them disappear over a hill.

It was ironic: just when Chloe had revealed to him that she knew the big secret, that he was more than human, he no longer needed a secret keeper.

Funny, she never thought she'd be the one left behind, not after everything they had been through in the Arctic. She had assumed that maybe because Clark finally understood she had known his secret – had kept it for several months without telling anyone – that they would have grown closer, somehow. That he'd fly back to her, like she had fervently prayed that day long ago when she sat by his sickbed and poured out her heart to him.

Instead, it was as if she were back in the barn so long ago, watching him abandon her for Lana Lang, the love of his life. And once again, she felt the perpetual knife in her heart twist painfully.

She had told him to leave her in the Yukon. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign country, no less, wasn't important when he could still go back in time to save lives, and to find his parents, his loved ones, back in Smallville. They both had to know they were okay, to see if Lois and her father had gotten out in one piece.

That meteor shower had seemed like a fate worse than death for a tiny community that had already been hit once, and while Chloe had been awed by the newly formed ice fortress, the look on Clark's face while she confessed her knowledge of his abilities, and his Speedy Gonzales departure, she had always expected him to return for her.

Chloe sighed heavily and pushed herself away from the wooden beam, only to duck behind a small crowd of workers when she spotted Lex Luthor in the crowd. Lex Luthor. As far as she was concerned, he was the most evil man in the world. The one who had actually found her in that northern hospital, and who might still remember that it was her who knocked him out before jumping through the portal into the arctic. The man who, she was almost sure, knew all about Clark Kent, though he had not yet slapped the correct label on him yet. And if she had anything to say about it, Chloe would live up to her end of the promise she'd made to Clark, and die before she spoke one iota of his true nature to Evil Incarnate himself.

But that still put her in the "alone" category. Her thoughts swirled with frustration, jealousy, and anger as she sneaked away from the crowd. Her father was trying to make a go at his new consulting firm in Metropolis, away from the wreckage of their former home. He said he needed a clean start, and since Chloe was starting Met U in a matter of weeks, he thought it best to move on as soon as possible. Lois had long ago left for Geneva to get Lucy out of yet another money scam and send her back to the General for what Chloe knew would be a long and hard rehabilitation. Lana was with the one person she had dreamed about ever since she had laid eyes on him in the eighth grade. Everyone else Chloe knew seemed to either have a life or was moving on from the meteor shower. Everyone but her.

For all the family she had, the friends she cared about, Chloe was alone, stuck in a holding pattern between high school and college. The _Daily Planet_ had yet to return the hundred phones calls and emails she had left about the internship that had opened up. She wouldn't meet her Met U roommate for another month, though she had received some information about the housing situation on campus. And it wasn't like her cell phone radiated with interesting calls, unless she counted the pizza delivery boy who had called to ask her out because he had been attracted to her when he'd delivered food to the apartment she and her father currently inhabited in Metropolis. Chloe felt like she could have fallen into the earth itself and no one would miss her or wonder what had become of her.

A wave of loneliness washed over her as she cautiously walked back to her red Beetle, her eyes always on the alert to dodge Lex's nearby presence and escape unnoticed. Not that it would be difficult, she thought, given that no one seemed to want her.

Hot tears pricked her eyes. She bit them back, however: she didn't have time to pause and give into her own petty troubles when so many of her neighbors had fared much worse from the meteor shower. What did it matter that, now more than ever, Chloe Sullivan wished for a friend, a sibling, someone who wouldn't completely abandon her when times got rough or for something or someone better? A person who wanted to read her articles or provide the Chunky Monkey when she needed to weep… and love her like family.

These thoughts dominated Chloe's mind when she reached her vehicle, which was filled with canned food for the local Red Cross chapter. When she got inside and slammed the driver's side door shut, she felt a sudden, painfully acute wave of melancholy shoot from her body like an energy pulse. Her mind felt like it was being ripped in half, and she shook with the intense expelling of energy. She clutched her head tightly; eyes closed in pain, as the wave rolled from her and out from the car into the world at large. And though it only lasted a moment, Chloe was weak and weary when the pain dispelled. She had never felt anything so… powerful before, and she wondered what it was and whether it would happen again.

The funniest part was, she didn't feel so sad anymore. In fact, she could honestly say she felt more or less free of her prior angst. Whatever had ripped through her had taken the emotional turmoil within her with it. A ribbon of fear marred Chloe's otherwise smooth forehead as she found her keys and started the ignition. A newfound purpose lurked inside: she wanted to know what she'd just experienced, even though she wasn't entirely sure the truth would set her free. Could it be linked to the incredible events she had experienced as a child? Either way, she would research until she got to the truth. The reporter in her wouldn't let it go, even if the woman inside said to accept and continue.

_At least I have something productive to do with my time_, Chloe thought with a wry smile. Maybe the "in between" time would be filled with more than helping out the less fortunate and waiting for her life to begin again in the fall. She drove off towards town to drop off her delivery, though her mind spun with endless possibilities.

This wave thing… it was nothing special, right?


	10. Chapter 10

As Chloe finished her story, she watched Rose carefully. She watched the confusion and disbelief cross her face. Admitting that she had an ability had never been an easy thing: seeing a near stranger's reaction to it, even more difficult.

"So you're telling me, you brought me across the space time continuum – because you wished for it?" Rose asked slowly after a moment.

Chloe cringed a little but nodded. "Yeah. Sounds like a bad _Sliders_ episode, doesn't it?"

The other woman's face broke out into a wide, happy grin. "Are you kidding me? I love that show!" she declared.

A little incredulous and surprised by the change in Rose's demeanor, Chloe only managed a weak smile.

"Come on! You've got this cool, kick-ass power!" Rose's eyes sparkled with what looked like gratitude and relief. "Besides, you took me out of my crappy world and into this one. Because of you, I met Dean, and I have the job at the _Inquisitor_ and am applying to the _Daily Planet_ for one of their reporter openings. Where's the bad in this?"

Chloe stood up and wrapped her arms around her waist. Rose's sudden acceptance of her theory as fact had her thrown for a loop. Especially since she wasn't certain it was the true account of what happened. The reporter in her demanded that she keep gathering facts, rather than just cling blindly to the theory.

"Rose, what I'm wondering, is why you didn't once notice anything… different? I mean, if you hopped from your world to mine, shouldn't you have realized it instantly? Things would be changed. The world, your work, the headlines? Anything?"

After what she had admitted, and what Rose had told her, Chloe's mind began to work. Had her longing somehow managed to bring the other woman into this universe the moment she had felt it? Did a crack in time help her along the way, or was it something more? Even more troubling – and Chloe had no desire to contemplate it – was whether she had wished Sam's attraction to her or not.

"Not really," Rose replied after a moment, "though it was weird that the _Daily Planet_ was suddenly _the_ newspaper to work for, where the crème de la crème worked. When I applied for the columnist position at the _Inquisitor_, I had done my research and that was the place where serious journalists worked. Anyone who was anyone wanted to be with the _Inquisitor_."

"The _Inquisitor_ was – seriously? That rag was the top newspaper dog where you came from?" She nearly laughed at the absurdity of the question.

Rose laughed. "Crazy, isn't it? And then I found out after the interview – wait a minute."

"What?" Chloe turned to see Rose's face pale considerably. Her eyes widened as she watched her stand up and head for the kitchen table, where her laptop lay. Trust Rose to bring her computer with her wherever she went, Chloe thought. Especially since that was something she did herself.

"Why didn't I notice that earlier?"

"Again… I say 'what'?"

Rummaging through her bag, Rose grabbed her laptop and booted it up, still speaking out loud. "Explains why I had to get a new ID, new social security number, bank account, not to mention the alias I'd been using –"

"Rose!"

Rose didn't look up at Chloe. "Hang on, I'm thinking!"

"Aloud."

"And?" she asked and finally looked up from her computer screen. Intense blue eyes regarded Chloe impatiently.

"And if you're not insane and headed for Belle Reeve, you wanna enlighten me?" Chloe asked and sat down at the table next to her.

Her eyes darted back to the screen as she pulled up a file. "I'd just brushed it off as a surge of confidence because I'd been so nervous going into the interview," she explained as she worked.

"Are you telling me that –?"

"That burst of longing you felt, Chloe. When did it happen?"

"Uh, I told you," she snarked.

"No, I need specifics," Rose insisted. "Date? Time? Anything?"

Chloe wracked her brain for a moment and tried to pinpoint the date. For something so monumental, she would have thought she'd remember more clearly… even if it had been a couple years before. "Hang on," she said suddenly. "I think I documented it."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Rose asked out loud and rolled her eyes playfully.

"I've been tracking metahuman behavior and movements for the last several years, including mine once I realized what was going on." She moved quickly into her room and returned to the kitchen with her own laptop in hand. Sitting across from Rose, she pulled up the file on herself.

"Using a database, right?"

"Used to be on paper. It's been digital for years. I call it my Wall of Weird."

Rose laughed knowingly. "I know. I have one, too." She pushed her laptop across the table and turned it around in the opposite direction.

It was Chloe's turn to laugh with surprised delight. "So I guess it's true what they say about twins and parallel universes." She glanced down at the file Rose had pulled up.

Rose gave her a look. "If you're going to say something about super-powered hot chicks…" She paused when Chloe suddenly let out a squeak of surprise.

"I've got the date listed as July 15, 2005," she interrupted and looked over at Rose. "And according to your file date, you have the same thing listed."

&&&&&

July 15, 2005: Metropolis, Kansas

As she walked through the front doors of _The Inquisitor_, Rose wondered if she was doing the right thing. Totally uprooting herself from the only home she knew and heading for the city might not be the best thing in the world. Even now, she felt the oppression of helplessness settle on her heart. Her trip to Metropolis that morning had been uneventful and painful; leaving her old life behind had hurt, though it had been necessary. She found the cheapest hotel, taken a shower, and put on her best outfit. Rose had been waiting for an opening to interview, and she was not going to let it get away.

She smiled politely at the front receptionist when she directed her to the group of elevators that would lead her to the third floor. Rose took in the crisp professionalism of the gateway, of the faint scent of ink and paper. Watched people load and unload from the yawning elevator doors towards their individual goals. She swallowed hard and wondered again if she was cut out of this kind of life.

Rose pressed the up button and waited for the car to arrive. This was definitely not _The Daily Planet_, she thought, looking at the framed front page articles, everything from the latest reports on global warming to the counter-terrorism steps the United States was taking to combat foreign attacks. She shook her head, wondered briefly at the potential employer's audacity, and stepped into the open elevator. The door slid gracefully shut, the shiny metal gleaming in her eyes. With a soft sigh, grateful she had been lucky enough to get a car to herself, Rose let her plastered "happy to be here face" fall into the emptiness she'd kept inside for the last two hours.

She missed her parents. Being alone in the world sucked beyond the imagining. Rose folded her arms around her stomach and wondered why she had even chosen to return to Smallville, Kansas for her senior year. Was it out of loyalty to her parents, to graduate from the school where she'd started? To give closure to the tragedy that had separated her from her parents forever? It wasn't like anyone at Smallville High School had missed her while she'd been gone, or had bothered to keep in touch during her incarceration. Why claim an accused murderer when you could spread gossip about her instead? Wasn't that what had happened? Didn't she deliberately skip the graduation ceremony because she didn't want to be a spectacle anymore?

Leaning back against the far side of the bright, shiny car, Rose commanded her racing thoughts to stop, to keep the despair at bay. They were detrimental to what she had achieved: a life outside Smallville, a chance to rise above the horror and drama that had dogged her steps the last few years. She was tired of being carrion, a carcass that fed other peoples' fears, gossip, and tale telling. She was looking forward to her _own _life.

And _The Inquisitor_ was her ticket to that life; she knew it.

But the problem still remained: there was no one to share what she expected to be good news, no one to call and celebrate her future employment opportunity. After this was finished, if Mr. Smith decided to take a chance on her reporter's sense, she'd return to the hotel, order a pizza, and spend another lonely evening with the television and her laptop. Rose closed her eyes as the bottomless pit called Loneliness threatened to consume her. Going home was impossible: she no longer had one. Her parents were dead, the result of some freak event she would never have believed for a nanosecond had she not witnessed it with her own eyes.

She frantically blocked the horrible images of her parents' brutal ends from her mind, tears streaming unchecked down her face. _My first job doesn't seem enough_, she thought wearily. _They'll never be here to see it, to see what I have become._ Her back pressed against the metal, as if trying to become one with it. She wanted to crawl away from the knots twisting her being into oblivion and didn't know how to escape the onslaught of emotion.

Suddenly, she felt it: a wave of intense longing and utter abandonment hit her head on, unlike anything she had ever felt before. Her stomach churned, making her nauseous, and she choked back a sob of defeat. She had repressed them for so long, did what she had to do in order to survive, which had meant sacrificing her grief over her parents. The emotions flowed through her veins, tortured her soul, made her admit to herself that, more than anything else, Rose Sullivan wanted to _belong_. To a family, to a friend, to someone who would love and accept her. She wanted to feel loved, to know someone cared whether she lived or died. Her soul heaved towards that acknowledgement, embraced it, and she openly wept as she hadn't since her parents died. The broken, lonely girl wanted to be whole again.

The elevator's ding sounded, and the moment fizzled away in a second. Rose heard the doors gently slide open but couldn't open her eyes to pass through the opening. She feared what she'd see on the other side, especially considering she no longer felt anything remotely emotional any more.

"Miss?" a disjointed female voice called. "You okay?"

Quickly wiping the tears from her cheeks, Rose somehow pried herself from the elevator wall and opened her blurry eyes. A couple women stood just inside the elevator doorway, both wearing masks of confused uncertainty. When she realized she'd reached her destination, she colored deeply and bit her lip. "Er, yeah, I'm… fine," she rasped and cleared her throat. "Thanks for, uh, holding the door." She managed a faint smile and pushed her way out of the elevator and into the nearly empty third floor hallway.

Ignoring the smattering of curious glances from passersby, Rose found the nearest chair and sat down quickly. She let out her pent up breath and made herself breathe evenly: turning purple and collapsing into a heap on the floor would only attract more attention. She pulled a kerchief – one that had belonged to her mother – from her purse and carefully dried her face. She forced her eyes to regain focus.

"What _was_ that?" she whispered aloud and looked down at the small piece of cloth clutched in her hands. Never had she experienced such an all-consuming emotional reaction in her life. Had it been because she'd repressed her grief over the loss of her parents and the life she'd been forced into? Everything else seemed tame, by comparison. Her mind began working theories despite her need to remain still. She wanted to know what happened, needed to find the answers… but she paused, her curiosity becoming shock, as she took a good look at her surroundings.

The third floor looked… different. The color scheme, the newspaper articles plastered to the walls, the coloring of the elevator behind her. Articles of the "real" theory behind the 1949 Roswell incident. Sightings of the Bat Boy along the Montana horizon. That definitely didn't seem right. _Maybe I came out on the wrong floor?_ Rose stood up and looked at the listing of offices on the floor. She saw the editor-in-chief's office listed at the top and glanced down the wide hall at the secretary desk positioned on the other end, the last barrier between her and her heart's desire. Right floor, right newspaper. She turned around in a slow circle and carefully examined her surroundings. Right floor, right newspaper. So why did everything look differently?

Rose composed herself with a sigh and a small smirk crossed her lips. Chalk it up to the boss's prerogative, she thought and closed the space between her and the secretary. She felt infused with confidence, with a feeling of warmth and hope she hadn't only moments ago. She wanted to examine more fully what had happened, and more importantly _why._ However, she could check out the rest of the floors later, when she'd be hired on as a full-time reporter.

_The Inquisitor_ wouldn't know what hit them, not when she was through with them.


	11. Chapter 11

"And again with the wow," Chloe replied after she'd finished reading Rose's commentary on the day that changed both of their lives.

"Not so much wow as _hell yeah_," Rose said with a smirk.

"You sound like Dean."

"And you belong with Sam."

Chloe paused and her smile faltered a little. _Sam._ Man, she wished she did, but in all honesty, she didn't know if Sam would react with the same enthusiasm as Rose had. She could never tell him, which meant he would leave town with his brother and Rose in tow, and never come back.

"Geez, what is that look for? It's not like the end is near."

"Rose, about Sam…"

"I already know what you're going to say, Chloe. And it's a moot point."

"You won't tell him about my ability?"

"Of course I won't. Because you know deep down inside that you need to tell him."

"But I don't know if what he feels for me is real, or if it's all in my head. Literally." She stood up and paced around the kitchen. "What if I wished him into existence, like that time I wished for a pony when I was six? What if he's nothing more than a figment of my imagination made flesh and blood?"

"You'd be surprised," Rose replied with a serene smile. "The Winchesters are strong. And they've seen and experienced things you have no name for." She propped her elbows against the table and grinned. "What did your parents do when they found the pony?"

Chloe smirked at the memory. "Freaked out. Wanted to know whose horse it was and how it had gotten into our apartment. I didn't know how to tell them I'd wished for it and it appeared."

"Kinda like you wanted someone like me around?"

"Apparently so," she replied with a grin. "It's nice having a girl to hang out with. We really have to compare databases sometime, maybe even combine them and share notes as we go along."

"This mean you're thinking about joining the three of us on a hunt sometime?" Rose's lips curled into a cheeky smile.

Chloe couldn't help the blush that spread across her cheeks. "Maybe I can be the eye in the sky, so to speak. I still have my job here at the Planet."

Rose shook her head. "Knowing Sam, he's gonna ask you to come with us and take down that restless spirit."

"I doubt that."

"They'll be here any minute, so why don't we wait and see?"

"Rose, promise me something."

"Sure, Chlo. Anything for my alternate half."

"Don't tell Sam about… my ability, okay? Dean, either. He might think _I'm_ the evil party and want to take me down or something."

"I won't say anything, but Dean's not like that. He knows his brother likes you. Might give him a hard time about it, but Sam doesn't date evil people."

"Like Sam says Dean doesn't date them, either?"

"Exactly."

Two sets of heavy footsteps sounded behind the door, followed by a heavy knocking. "Candygram!" Dean's voice sounded from the other side.

Chloe looked at Rose and cocked an eyebrow. "Candygram?" she mouthed with a wry grin and stood up.

Rose shook her head. "You really don't want to know," she whispered and bit her lip to keep from laughing.

Chloe opened the door to find the Winchesters looking like hopefuls for the next American Idol competition. "I take it you two want to come in," she replied and gave Sam a wide smile, hiding her uncertainty from him.

"Only if it means Sam'll get lucky in the next week or so," Dean smirked and glanced at Sam before walking inside towards Rose.

Chloe turned surprised, slightly embarrassed eyes to Sam, who looked like he wanted to melt beneath the floor. She stepped aside to let him in. "You always that anxious about your brother's sex life?" she quipped to Dean though she never took her eyes off Sam.

Dean, by this time, had plopped down on the couch, narrowly missing the girls' digital recorders. "Hey, when you're on the road as much as we are, you get lonely." He took them, turned them off, and looked over at Rose with curious eyes.

"So Sam must be the lonely one, since you and Rose are an item."

"Chloe, you're only feeding into his overblown ego," Rose interrupted with a smirk and walked to Dean. "Believe me, Dean couldn't be happier, knowing Sam has someone else in his life." Shooting a knowing glance at Chloe, she sat down beside Dean, took the recorders out of his hand, and gave him a kiss.

Sam, who had hovered in the doorway the entire time, rolled his eyes at the blatant display of public affection and looked down at Chloe. "So how did everything go?" he whispered and stared at her, as if in search of any doubt or negation of their theory.

Chloe nodded and let herself swim in the attention he was offering her. "Has to be the alternate universe angle," she replied and took his hands. "Rose is only as dangerous as I am, which means we could get into some serious trouble together."

He chuckled, his eyes warm. "Sounds like me and Dean. Can't tell you all the messes we've gotten into."

Chloe found herself wanting to hear each and every story, no matter how upsetting or tragic it might be. She felt her emotions swirling inside, growing into the now-familiar ball of energy that, if released, would thrust itself out of her and into him. He would be confessing all his family's secrets and tales within moments if she wanted it badly enough.

She bit down on her lip, however, and forced the want and need to subside into a calm lake of emotional energy. She had enough doubts as to Sam's true feelings for her: letting her power take over the situation wasn't going to help.

A dark look passed across his face, and she forced herself out of her internal monologue. "I'd love to hear about some of them… sometime," she confessed aloud.

"How about dinner tonight? Date 2.0, Watson?"

"No, you're Watson, remember? I thought we already had this debate."

"Then we can debate something else, like how much better at Trivial Pursuit I am." Sam glanced at Dean and Rose, who had stood up, hand in hand, and were heading towards the door, and then turned his full attention back on Chloe.

"You've never seen me in action, then."

Sam smiled happily, his dimples making an appearance and nearly knocking her off her feet. "Is that a dare?"

"Maybe." She knew her Trivial Pursuit game hid beneath the chaos in her bedroom closet, a testament to the fact that she hadn't had someone want to play against her since the time Clark and Pete tried to outdo her as a team. They _still_ periodically complained about how she had somehow cheated in answering the Sports questions.

"So maybe dinner and then a game back here?"

Chloe readily agreed and refused to acknowledge the anxiety twisting in her belly. If Sam Winchester wanted to see her again so soon, it meant only one thing: he really might like her, or at least enough to start something between them. The problem was, she remained unsure whether those feelings were true or not. It didn't matter that she liked him and had felt a pull towards him the moment they had met: being honest and telling him everything was the right thing to do. Best to be upfront about what she really was, even if it meant losing him for good.


	12. Chapter 12

Something was wrong. Sam felt it in his bones. Chloe had been too silent their entire walk to the small, cozy corner café a few blocks from her apartment. He'd picked her up on time and they had decided to walk -- rather than drive -- the short distance, but despite their light, flirtatious conversation, Sam noticed the light in her eyes was gone, her tone just shy of dull and sour, and she kept him physically at a distance. The one time he tried to grasp her hand to hold it ended with her slipping away from him and brushing it off as if it never happened.

Moreover, she had yet to tell him anything about her conversation with Rose. Did Chloe talk about this alternate universe theory to Rose? Had they come to an agreement about who was what? When he and Dean arrived at her apartment earlier that day, Sam saw both women so brilliantly happy that he figured all had been settled. However, neither of them spoke of what they had discussed, or whether the theory that Rose and Chloe were the same person in two different universes was actually the case. Sam suspected that while they knew the truth, some spoken agreement kept them silent.

As he and Chloe were seated at a table and given menus, Sam wondered if Rose was telling Dean about this afternoon's dialogue, or if she was waiting for Chloe's all-clear signal first. He watched her practically hide behind the menu and frowned.

Silence was something he was used to: after all, despite his closeness to his brother, Dean was not a talker unless he had something to say. It was why Sam had learned to read body language so well, and what Chloe's slender body told him was she was scared of something. She hid because it was easier than telling him what was going on in her mind. Her hands gripped the menu a little too tightly, which spoke of how hard she was trying to grasp onto whatever frightened her. What was more, Sam swore he felt sorrow and pain emanate from behind the menu, the kind of hardened depression, like she expected him to reject her.

Which was ridiculous, considering he had already told her how he felt about her.

When their server appeared, Sam touched Chloe's hand with his finger. "Earth to Chloe, what would you like?" he whispered, a smile in his voice.

He felt her skin prickle beneath his touch, though she literally jumped in her seat. Sam kept the smile plastered on his face, though he wondered at her duality: she wanted his touch but was scared of it.

"Sure," she said from behind the menu and ordered something off the menu quickly. Sam, in turn, did likewise with a polite smile. The server smiled, took their menus, and walked away.

With nothing to hide behind, Chloe seemed at odds with herself: her hands found their way underneath the table and she stared intently at her silverware. "Trying to make them float?" he asked gently.

She looked up, a little startled. "What?"

"Or maybe you want to wow me with your spoon-bending abilities, like in_The Matrix_."

Chloe appeared to nearly jump out of her seat with fear, but seemed to force herself to remain seated. "I can't move things with my mind."

Sam was a little surprised by the harsh note in her voice. Almost defensive, like she was waiting for him to accuse her of something._So why the long face and fear?_ he wanted to ask but didn't. She seemed almost as skittish as a newborn colt, and Sam began to wonder if she, in fact, wanted to be on this date with him. Maybe she had changed her mind after he left her place. Maybe some news-breaking story at the _Daily Planet_ had caught her attention. Sam glanced down at his hands playing idly with his silverware and sighed deeply. "If you don't want to be here with me. . ." he began and left the rest of his sentence hanging between them. He'd give her a chance to bail, if that was what she wanted.

"What? No, Sam. No. I want to be here with you."

Sam looked up to see her determined face and intensity in her emerald eyes. Eyes he wanted to swim in until he drowned. Something in her had snapped, and it showed all over her face. He shook his head in wonder and confusion. "Then why so you look so. . . afraid?"

The intensity wavered for a moment. "Because, there's something I have to tell you."

Sam's heart pounded in his chest, and he stopped drawing circles with his fork. "Okay. I'm listening," he said cautiously.

"You're not going to like it."

"Hey, try me. Seen a lot, remember? Been through things you wouldn't believe. You even said you wanted to hear about them sometime."

Chloe sucked in an unsteady breath, making Sam more uncertain by the minute about the situation. "Yeah, but I bet you've never heard anything like this before."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with our doppelganger theory, would it?"

"Kinda. More like, I have an ability and I think I might have used it on you."

The words flew out of her mouth like bullets, and it took a minute for him to comprehend what she'd just said. And when it finally hit him, he wondered if the floor had fallen out from underneath him. Sam opened his mouth to speak, really surprised by her words, but was interrupted by the arrival of their drinks. He took his glass of soda and took a drink before continuing. "What kind of ability?" he asked and prayed his voice didn't betray the emotion inside.

She hesitated for a long moment before speaking, to the point where he wondered if she would divulge her secret. "If I want something… badly enough, I can make it happen." Chloe's voice was small and scared. "Literally. If I want someone to believe something badly enough, I can make them believe it. Feel it."

&&&&&

The tension was excruciating and so thick she could slice it with her dinner knife. Chloe watched Sam nod his head slowly, and she saw him fight for the words to convey whatever he was thinking about. What was going through his head. She saw the uncertainty in his eyes and twisted her napkin in her lap tightly.

"I don't try to do it on purpose, if that's what you're thinking," she continued when he said nothing. "It's just something that… happens."

Sam cleared his throat and edged towards her in his seat. "Okay, so… you can… make things happen," he said in a cautious tone and folded his hands on top of the table. "What does that mean? I don't… I mean, how…" He waved a hand in the air as if searching for words.

She gripped her napkin so tightly, she nearly ripped it in two. "I mean, if I want something badly enough, I can will it into being. I can make people act a certain way, and they'll think it was their idea. If I want a car – it suddenly appears."

Sam stared at her, his eyes wide with incredulity. "Seriously?"

"You want a Mustang?"

A smirk flitted across Sam's lips. "Thanks, but no." He glanced down at his hands for a second, and then looked at Chloe again. "So… is that why Rose is here? You wished her into existence?"

"Kind of," she agreed. "But not exactly like that." Chloe looked into his concerned eyes and understood that keeping the truth hidden – now that the cat was out of the bag – would only make things worse when he stormed out of the café: at least, that was the most likely scenario in her mind. Who in their right minds would want to date someone who could manipulate emotion? She put one of her hands over his gently, smoothing her thumb along his skin. His hands were rough and calloused, and she took a moment to appreciate the simple contact.

She watched his rich greenish eyes go through varying stages of confusion, surprise, and realization. She felt him still beneath her touch, though he made no motion to break their hands intertwined. "Are we talking _Abracadabra, Open Sesame_ sense?"

"No, as in I wanted a friend so badly that my wishing for one took Rose out of her world and… i-into m-mine." Chloe cursed the warble in her voice as she strove to keep her emotions in check. She watched Sam lean back in his chair, looking keenly interested in the conversation, which heartened her a little bit. The spark of interest barely concealed the warmth and concern she saw lurking in his eyes, however, and she swallowed hard again. Was that really Sam being concerned, or merely her emotional turmoil making its way to him and manipulating him into concern? "I was in a bad place emotionally a couple years ago, and I felt this – this kind of wave shoot out from my body."

"A wave?"

"Kind of. Anyway, it was like something pushed all my loneliness and despair out of my body. Came and went in a flash, and I never understood what really happened until I met… Rose."

Sam cocked his head to the side and smiled a little. "You're saying emotional energy created Rose?"

"No, more like it broke through some inter-dimensional wall and helped her step through it, because she felt it, Sam." Chloe leaned on her arms and looked at him intently. She wanted him to understand the severity of this; that she could make him feel anything she wanted him to feel. If she wanted to.

And as much as she wanted Sam Winchester to like her, she refused to accept anything that wasn't naturally him. So she kept a tight lid on her desire and need. There was nothing else she could do, especially since it seemed he had not yet come to this conclusion.

Sam looked impressed and slightly awed by her confession. "Wow, I had no idea something like that was possible."

"It is when green meteor rocks are introduced into the equation."

Sam leaned closer to her. He watched the riot of emotion swirl in her eyes and wanted to know what was going on inside her head. "Tell me about these meteor rocks, Chloe. You mentioned them earlier but never told me anything about them."

Chloe swallowed hard and gave Sam a quick breakdown of how the meteor shower of 1989 changed the town of Smallville forever, how the green meteor rocks had infected the soil, the water table, and many of its inhabitants. How so many people there did not start experiencing their metabolic changes until adolescence at least. For many, it was as if the hormonal changes triggered the dormant mutations. But for others, like Tina Greer, Alicia Baker or even her, the mutation started the day they came in contact with the rocks.

"Mom and I were driving through Smallville the day the meteors hit. I don't remember much about it, except this overwhelming feeling of terror and then comfort." Chloe looked at her hand in Sam's and took a deep breath. "I remember being cradled and felt so safe, even though something really bad had happened. I could feel it, Sam: the deaths and chaos, the feelings of terror and fear. The determination of some to get out alive. The love that came from Mom. It all poured into me somehow. I can't explain it, but ever since then, I've been… different."

Sam cocked an eyebrow. "You're not that different, Chloe."

"Tell that to the pony that popped into my bedroom when I was seven just because I wished for it."

Sam's expression was one of empathy, like he knew what she was going through. Chloe frowned and stared at their hands for a moment; she wondered how he could possibly relate to any of this. She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he held on to it, refusing to let her retreat into herself. "So how do you figure you used this ability on me? I'm real. Flesh and blood. Have been for 24 years and counting. You didn't wish me into existence."

_You want to bet?_ she thought with an inward grimace. "No, but I wanted you to like me. Have since, well, since I nearly blinded you with my mace."

Sam grinned at some memory, and she watched his dimple peek at her flirtatiously. "I did mention I was sorry for thinking you were Rose, right?"

She blushed and nodded. "I think you did. That still doesn't mean what you're feeling is true, though."

"So you believed me when I said I liked you?"

"Yes."

"Then I think we can deal, because what I feel? It's true. When I said I was attracted to you, I meant it."

"But how do you know –?" Chloe's frantic words were abruptly cut off when Sam put his hand over her lips to silence her. She bit back a squeak of surprise at the suddenness, like he didn't want to argue the point with her.

"Because I have impressions of people," he said. "I just know when someone is good or evil, right or wrong. Don't ask me to explain it, but it's been that way since I can remember." He pulled his hand from her lips, but not before he touched his finger against them. "Besides, I have abilities of my own to tell you about."

"You do?" she asked, a little surprised at his words. His fingers trailed against her cheek and she felt the blush burn across her cheeks.

He nodded and smiled widely. "Yeah, but now's not the time to tell you about it. Right now, let's eat and you can tell me about all your ability."

"So you'll show me yours after I show you mine?"

Sam laughed at the snappy comeback, and she enjoyed the spark of amusement that lit up his eyes. "Something like that, yeah. Besides, we'll have a long time to talk when you go on our next hunt."

Their food came and interrupted the surprise Chloe experienced at Sam's offer to accompany them. She waited for a moment and went through the motions of preparing to eat – napkin in her lap, fork and knife in hand – and then looked at Sam. She saw hesitant expectation in his expression. "Seriously? You want me to… go with you?"

He nodded. "Talked it over with Dean, and he flat-out said Rose won't go without you. And he wants Rose along."

"Your brother doesn't like me too much, does he?"

Sam shook his head in protest and watched her eat for a moment. "Actually, that's his way of saying he likes you." When she looked up and twisted her face into a scowl, he grinned. "I know, Dean's a little strange, but you'll get used to him. Eventually."

"But… you still want me to go with you?"

"Yes, Chloe, I do," he confessed and took a bite of food.

"Why?"

"Because I want to get to know you better. Plus you can research almost as well as I can."

Sam watched Chloe's eyes sparkle with warmth as she playfully threatened to toss her spoonful of salad at him and informed him she could out search him any day of the week. Their conversation turned more personal as they talked about lighter topics of discussion. Her animated banter warmed him as dinner progressed, which made him hopeful that she would say yes, take a few days off from the _Daily Planet_, and go with them. However, she obviously harbored a few doubts about him and probably the fact that he hadn't told her about his ability. Settling her doubts was important: the problem is he wasn't sure how to do that.

Once dinner was over and he paid the bill– cash, of course – they started back for her apartment, hand-in-hand this time. She looked more relaxed, but Sam was determined to settle whatever fears she still harbored. It didn't matter how long it took, he thought. Anything to prove that her ability held no sway over him. "You probably want to know about my power," he started and gazed at her. When her eyes met his and her mouth curled into a sardonic grin, he laughed. "Okay, I take it you have a million questions to ask, so hit me with them."

"Tell me what it is first, then I'll play Twenty Questions with you," she prompted, squeezing his hand gently to reassure him.

"I have premonitions," Sam said bluntly. "They started out as dreams, but they happen more and more during the day."

"Oh." He felt a mixture of emotions from her: hesitation in the way she didn't speak, like she was afraid to ask him anything; relief in the way she clung to his hand, afraid to let go and separate them. "What kinds of premonitions?"

He sighed. "Death premonitions. They're connected to this. . . demon Dean and I have been hunting for a really long time."

That obviously startled her, because she stopped dead in her tracks. Sam halted and faced her. She looked troubled, and he was not surprised: he'd be a little freaked out if he was around someone like him, too. The fact that they were connected with the demon who killed his mother, Sam knew that if Chloe somehow got involved with him, that she might be in danger. More than ever, he didn't want that for her. She had enough to deal with in learning to keep her emotions in check.

And that was when it hit him: maybe that was the reason why her ability didn't affect him. Because he had one, too. And they negated each other, somehow. . Like the way Andy's ability to control minds didn't affect him. "Chloe, I think I know why you don't have any sway over me," he said abruptly. He put his hands on her shoulders gently and looked intently at her.

"Gee, thanks for making a girl feel needed," she retorted wryly.

"No, I'm serious," he said. "I think your abilities don't work on me. Which means that I like you because of who you are, not because you've put some sort of whammy on me."

"Why is that?" She looked both hopeful and intrigued, which was encouraging.

"I think our abilities cancel each other out. It's not working on me because we're alike in that sense."

"How do you know?" she asked and cocked an eyebrow.

"You said you can make people do things and think it was their idea, right?"

Chloe nodded in response, though he saw her face fall into a mask of wariness.

"Then try to put an idea in my head," he suggested and took a step back from her. He watched as she turned a little pale and wondered if this was the best idea. "Look, I don't know how I know," he said quickly, "but if there's something you want from me, then try to make me want it, too."

&&&&&

Chloe stared at Sam, incredulous. The man had lost his mind, without a doubt, she thought and felt her gut twist with fear. She stared at his earnest face, saw the honesty in his eyes, and something inside told her to make that wish. What was the worst that could happen, besides leaving her standing there on the sidewalk?

She swallowed hard and stared intently at him. And thought. _What do I want from you?_ she asked him mentally. What was the one thing she'd been looking forward to since he picked her up for their date?

And then it hit her: a kiss. More than anything, she wanted to feel Sam's soft lips on hers and feel his warm embrace surround her. Ever since that day in the park, she had thought of little else when they were parted. Chloe smiled and felt the rush of emotion, the wave of longing building up inside her so quickly it threatened to overrun her. _Kiss me, Sam_, she thought and let the emotion out. It spread throughout her body like wildfire and then suddenly shot from her being like an arrow towards the intended target: the man standing in front of her.

The burning dissipated and Chloe broke eye contact. It was done. She had done it. Now all she waited for was his timely embrace and warm, passionate kisses.

&&&&&

Sam waited patiently and watched her work through her ability to bring him to her desire. Part of him wondered what she wanted from him, because he wanted so much from her. He saw the crest of her need in her green eyes, which seemed to glitter in the dimly lit street. He noticed when her shoulders stooped in defeat and her eyes focus on the ground; felt the wall she tried to put between them as she waited for him to move.

Several moments passed, and yet Sam felt no sudden compulsion to do anything. To her. With her. Not anything he'd already been thinking about during dinner. He smiled and took her hands gently. The touch seemed to shock her out of whatever was going through her mind, because she lifted her eyes to his.

"So, Chlo," he asked gently, "what did you want me to do?"

"You mean, you didn't feel that?" she asked.

Sam shook his head and grinned at her. He carefully maintained his distance to prove to her that, despite what she might be thinking, he wasn't moved by any kind of mental suggestion she had tossed at him.

When he saw Chloe's eyes grow wide with astonishment, he wondered if anyone had ever accepted her uniqueness before – had even given it a chance – and then realized it didn't matter. The point was, he did. And that was all that mattered.

Sam's smile grew bigger as watched her with warm eyes. . . and was a little surprised to see her struggle for a response and then shrug.

"Well, that's good," she said finally and smiled.

With a laugh, Sam pulled her into his arms and tucked her head under his chin. He marveled at how nicely she fit against him despite the height difference. "Definitely, especially considering what we both know."

"And what's what?"

"I'm totally into you of my own free-will, and we're both freaks." He leaned back and tipped her face up to his. "Might as well be freaks together, if that's okay with you."

"Sure, Watson," she replied softly and smiled. "I think I can handle that."

He shook his head but leaned down and touched his lips to hers gently. She pressed against him and kissed him back completely before she broke the kiss and fisted his shirt tightly. "Only if you concede that you're Watson."

"Never. Especially when I beat you at Trivial Pursuit and every other game imaginable while we're on the road together. Just wait until I tell Lois. . . and I bet I can get a story out of this trip, too."

Pressing a kiss to her head, Sam grabbed her hand and they headed towards her apartment building. He listened to her talk out loud about all the things she had to do before they headed out of town and looked forward to this next hunt. It would be anything but boring.


End file.
